This ring is for you, Bobby. The Boston Red Sox have won the World Series three times in the last 10 years, and the third time this week they owe to Bobby Valentine.

You doubt that? You doubt that I am sincere about that? Get serious.

Without equivocation, without fear of contradiction, I say flatly that the Red Sox of 2013 would not be baseball’s major league champions were it not for the Red Sox of 2012.

If you don’t get my point, I am telling you had the Valentine-managed Red Sox not played so dreadfully in losing 93 games and finishing last in the American League East, behind the Yankees, behind the Rays, behind the Orioles and even the Blue Jays, the Red Sox might have concluded that Valentine deserved a chance to manage the second year of his two-year contract.

Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox president and chief executive officer, might have thought his decision to hire Valentine to replace Terry Francona wasn’t …

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A rare timeout seems to have settled over the Alex Rodriguez circus – three rings at least, maybe more – so this might be a good time to explore the bizarre circumstances that have erupted and the individuals whose number has proliferated in becoming part of them. A scorecard definitely is needed to follow it all.

The core circumstance is Rodriguez’s appeal of the unprecedented 211-game suspension Commissioner Bud Selig has levied on the New York Yankees’ $275 million superstar for allegedly violating the agreement Major League Baseball has with the Players Association on illegal performance-enhancing substances.

M.L.B. has not nabbed Rodriguez with a positive test or two or three, but officials and investigators claim to have a multitude of evidence that they say demonstrates Rodriguez’s guilt, A-Rod, however, denies it all and has filed a grievance challenging the suspension.

Going into the hearing before baseball’s impartial arbitrator, Frederic Horowitz, which began earlier this month and is scheduled to resume next month, I had two theories:

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Don Mattingly has learned a thing or two in the past quarter century or so. In 1987 Mattingly, a 25-year-old first baseman with the New York Yankees, let himself be intimidated by George Steinbrenner. Now the 52-year-old manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Mattingly has turned the tables but on the Dodgers.

In 1987 Mattingly was headed to salary arbitration, and people on both sides of the labor fence believed he could win a record salary over $2 million. However, the previous year Steinbrenner said he would never pay a player $2 million, implying that he would trade such a player before he would pay him such an outrageous salary.

Mattingly didn’t want the Yankees’ owner to trade him so he directed his agent to submit a salary of $1,975,000. The Yankees went in at $1.7 million, and of course Mattingly won, though he also could have won at a few hundred thousand more.

Fast forward to last Monday when Mattingly and Dodgers’ general manager Ned Colletti held a season-ending news conference at Dodger Stadium …

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