The Zen of Bobby V

Andrew Jenks, the filmmaker behind The Zen of Bobby V -- scheduled to premiere tomorrow night on ESPN2 -- talks about his subject and his project over at the Huffington Post:

Bobby has immersed himself into the Japanese culture. He loves Japanese food and studies Japanese for at least an hour every day. In the spring, he frequents Japan's much-adored cherry trees. In July, during his first weekend off in nearly four months (it was the All-Star break), he climbed Mt. Fuji. When the season was over, and it seemed as if Bobby would head back home for his month and a half off, he instead took a three day jaunt across Japan: from a boy band concert in southern Japan (he appeared in a music video with the band) to a fire festival in Osaka.

Bobby has become notorious for riding his bicycle everywhere. After only a year of coaching in Japan, Bobby's coaches picked up on his love to ride and bought him a bike that he could bring everywhere the team traveled. It was always a sight to see the team bus being loaded/unloaded: there were bags, bats, gloves, and Bobby's bike. We quickly caught on. In the summer, we imported a tandem bicycle from Hawaii: this enabled one of us to peddle in the front and one of us to sit in the back to film Bobby riding.

As I've mentioned before, Bobby Valentine sounds like a really neat guy. Regardless of what he was when we all knew him back when he was with the Rangers and Mets, he seems to have had a life-changing experience since moving to Japan. I think I'm gonna watch this thing.


Thanks to Osmodious for the link.