One by one, umpire Jim McKean stuck the scuffed baseballs in his pants pockets. When McKean's pockets filled up, he handed them to a ball boy for safekeeping, then continued collecting evidence.

After that game a decade or so ago, McKean told reporters he was going to send the baseballs that had been thrown by Oakland closer Dennis Eckersley to the American League office for inspection. He said they were among the "worst defaced" balls he had ever seen.

Yet when Tony La Russa was asked about the situation, he responded that it was "typical Bobby Valentine bullspit." The next morning, only one Bay Area newspaper even bothered to report that Eckersley was being turned into the league.

The great La Russa had spoken. Valentine, then managing The Texas Rangers, had once again been dismissed as one who didn't deserve the respect of his position. The AL took no formal action against Eckersley, but that didn't mean Valentine's suspicions were wrong. The Toronto Blue Jays similarly accused Eckersley of cheating in the 1991 playoffs.

There have been many similar situations through the years for Valentine, especially when the other party is a popular, successful manager like La Russa or Bobby Cox.

In 11 years as a major-league manager, Valentine's teams never have won a division championship. But these New York Mets are only two wins away from the World Series, which just might turn out to be the first Subway Series since 1956. If it doesn't, it is more likely the perennial champions Yankees who spoil the party, not Bobby V.'s Mets.

For the second year in a row, the Mets pulled off a first-round upset after entering the playoffs as wild cards.

They did it to the arrogant Arizona Diamondbacks a year ago and to San Francisco this year. The plot got better for Valentine when LaRussa's St. Louis Cardinals beat Atlanta in the other NL semifinal.

Cox's Braves had been kryptonite for the Mets, who celebrated their absence by winning the first two games of the NL Championship Series in St. Louis. If they can win two out of three from the Cardinals this weekend at a rocking Shea Stadium, Valentine will truly be the king of Queens.

Don't underestimate the Mets' chances of replacing the Yankees as New York's best team. They would probably be favored in a Subway Series. You can't imagine the joy that Valentine, so often dismissed, would feel at winning baseball's ultimate series, especially if he did it against local icon Joe Torre.

If his team reaches the World Series, Valentine should be able to dictate the terms of an overdue contract extension or walk away from an uneasy relationship with Mets' General Manager Steve Phillips, possibly to become the next manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

There would be delicious symmetry in Valentine, a former USC tailback and first round pick of the Dodgers, being brought back to rescue the floundering NL flagship.

There is no one he would rather knock off along the his way than La Russa, who, like Cox, is used to having the last laugh. Valentine and La Russa have had a one-sided rivalry since the latter was still with the White Sox.

La Russa was 34 when Jerry Reinsdorf gave him his first job as a manager. Valentine had just turned 35 when he left a coaching job with Davey Johnson's good-time Mets to take over the laughingstock Rangers in 1985.

After Carlton Fisk's filibusters on the mound contributed to a particularly tedious game at the original Comiskey Park, Valentine wondered aloud if the White Sox got paid by the hour: La Russa wasn't amused.

Nor, according to Valentine, was he happy to hear that Valentine had celebrated Kirk Gibson's homer off Oakland's Eckersley in the 1988 World Series. Valentine may have been managing in the same league as La Russa, but his sympathies were with his mentor, Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

"I told him that I wasn't going to ignore 20 years of loyalty because I was supposed to show allegiance to the league," Valentine told the New York Times. "I was going to cheer for who I wanted to cheer for."

While La Russa won the American League West in his fourth full season with the White Sox, Valentine couldn't work his magic in Texas. He may have saved the franchise by being a tireless salesman of the game he loves, but within the baseball establishment he was criticized for promoting himself instead of his players.

When La Russa was fired by Reinsdorf, he had barely hung up the phone when Oakland's Walter Haas called with a job offer. But when Valentine was fired in his seventh season in Texas, there were no lateral moves. He sucked it up and went first to Class AAA, then to the Chiba Lotte Mariners, but even that ended early.

This just may be a season when all of Valentine's old hurts are healed. He opened the year with the Mets in Tokyo, showing Japanese fans he has gone on to better things. He has a chance to end it by stopping La Russa short of the World Series.

There's no dismissing him this time.

Baseballhistorian.com (Rotating Green Boxes)