Kelly Shoppach reportedly sent text message to Red Sox owners from Adrian Gonzalez’s phone
Adrian Gonzalez denied the information in a Yahoo! Sports report that said he and other prominent Red Sox players blasted manager Bobby Valentine to the owners, and it looks like he was partially truthful.
Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan reported that some Red Sox players met with the owners on July 26 to complain about Bobby Valentine after Adrian Gonzalez sent a text message on behalf of the team. Gonzalez admitted a meeting took place, but he denied the information in the report.
“The source is inaccurate,” Gonzalez said on Wednesday. “It says that I was animated and one of the most vocal guys in the meeting, and that’s false. I had a discussion with Bobby about that today. He knows exactly what happened. He knows the truth. I don’t know why this all of a sudden becomes something because this happened a month ago. So it’s all been cleared, and now somebody decides to write it. It’s already old.”
Gonzalez may have been partially telling the truth when he said the source was inaccurate. A report from the New York Daily News says that though the text message came from his phone, he was not the one who composed it.
The New York Daily News reports that backup catcher Kelly Shoppach, who was acquired by the Mets this week, wrote the message on behalf of a group of players. The players reportedly felt the message would command the most attention if it were sent from Gonzalez, who is the team’s highest-paid player. Shoppach denied involvement when confronted on Saturday.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told the Daily News.
Another Red Sox player anonymously defended Gonzalez to the Daily News.
“All I know is that Adrian didn’t do what people are saying he did,” one Red Sox player told the paper. “He’s not like that. He’s a good team guy. He’s the kind of guy who would even cover for someone who did something wrong. He’d take a bullet.”
What the source needs to consider is that maybe Gonzalez was being a good team guy when he allowed the message to be sent from his phone. All I know is that there are major problems in Boston, and they have too many good players to completely start over. The easiest solution is firing Bobby Valentine, who never should have been hired in the first place.
