The most enduring image from Bobby Valentine’s six full seasons managing the Mets might be the time, in 1999, he was ejected from a game by an umpire and then sneaked back into the dugout incognito, wearing dark glasses and an eye-black mustache. But on a recent afternoon, in his home town of Stamford, Connecticut, Valentine revelled in being recognized. Passersby on Main Street waved, wished him luck, stopped to chat. He greeted a parking-enforcement agent sticking a ticket on the windshield of an S.U.V. “Good to see you!” the officer said.
“Keep those taxes coming!” Valentine replied. Both laughed.
Valentine was en route to a local park for a party for his seventy-first birthday, which doubled as the unofficial kickoff for his campaign to become Stamford’s mayor. The athletic director at nearby Sacred Heart University for the past eight years, he has been a beloved Stamfordian since lettering in three sports at Rippowam High, in the sixties. He’s kept a house in town through two dozen seasons managing ball clubs in the United States (Mets, Red Sox, Texas Rangers) and in Japan, and for four decades has owned a downtown sports bar and restaurant, which likes to claim that he invented the sandwich wrap. He also spent ten months, in 2011, as Stamford’s public-safety director. During that time, colleagues floated the idea that he should pursue the city’s top job.
“I always thought and saw myself as the mayor of the city,” Valentine said, a light-blue blazer draped over one forearm, and his head of tidy white hair contrasting with a baseball lifer’s tan. “Tommy Lasorda”—the longtime Dodgers manager—“used to kid and tease me, ‘Oh, you know, Bobby Valentine, the mayor of Stamford, Connecticut.’ ”
His entry into the race, as an unaffiliated candidate, against a Democratic incumbent and a Democratic primary challenger, drew an amused response. (One apparently aggrieved Mets fan tweeted, “I will run against you! My platform: More playing time for Benny Agbayani!”) Some local politicos doubted whether Valentine, until recently a registered Republican, would be the nonpartisan he promised. (He supported George W. Bush, who, as the Rangers’ part owner in the nineties, fired Valentine.) “I did change it recently because that’s the line I wanted to run on,” Valentine said of his party registration. “I didn’t change it recently in how I thought of myself.” He added that he had voted for both Democrats and Republicans in local elections, and Democrats in recent national ones, and that he questioned the relevance of broad-stroke partisanship in municipal governance.
“My whole thing isn’t about policy, because we’ll have great policy,” he said. “You figure out what the problems are and what you can fix, and you make it part of your policy that you’re going to implement.” He pitched a mayorship more about process and people. “Some say, ‘Oh, that stuff doesn’t work in city government,’ and I say, ‘Well, let’s see.’ ”
He surveyed the party setup: oversized Connect Four sets, tubs of local beer, a d.j. spinning the Staple Singers. He was to make a brief speech. “A lot of campaigns seem like there’s poetry during the campaign and prose when the campaign’s over, right?” he said. “I’m not sure that I’m gonna waste anybody’s time with a lot of poetry.”
He entered the park, mingling with the business-casual crowd of nearly two hundred old pals and potential constituents. Eventually, he was called to a small dais by Jessica Mannetti, Sacred Heart’s women’s-basketball coach, who gave a warm introduction to her boss.
“Let’s make sure that everyone understands,” Valentine said from the dais. “I went to the junior prom with Jessica’s mom.” The audience chuckled. The sun glared off a glassy downtown high-rise that, until earlier this summer, had been known as Trump Parc. Valentine rattled off the half-dozen Stamford neighborhoods he has called home and touted the city’s diverse schools. He recalled phoning “one of the very prominent Democratic people in our city” to discuss the idea of his candidacy. “He said, ‘Come on, the people who vote in our community, they’re all dumb and lazy.’ ” The crowd buzzed. “And I said, ‘Well, I think it’s time to energize them.’ ”
Two aides lugged a pair of white sheet cakes to a folding table. One featured Stamford’s ornate seal (a pair of keys, a Pilgrim with a Native American, and a mill), and the other bore the city’s minimalist logo, a sketch of the local skyscraper One Landmark Square. Both said “Happy Birthday Bobby!” and held many rapidly melting candles. “Because of COVID, you can’t blow ’em out,” Valentine said. He motioned for staffers to come and frantically wave their hands to extinguish the flames. Some children tried to join in. The former safety director urged and reassured them. “Trust me,” Valentine said, a finger raised in the air, “you’re not gonna get burned!” ♦
