GO SOX!!

GO SOX

This week at WAC CT 12/3/11

This past week at WAC was a very exciting one. As many of you know, in early November we hosted a program called “Play Ball: How Baseball has Gone Global”. This programs featured speakers were Bobby Valentine, ESPN analyst, and former MLB player and manager and Larry Lucchino, President and CEO of the Boston Red Sox (WAC CT’s unofficial favorite team!). The program was designed to focus on all aspects of how baseball is a global game, topics up for discussion were: How the game is extremely popular in Japan, how players are recruited from all over the world, and how the game may differ in varying cultures. WAC wanted to focus in how the popularity and interest in baseball continues to spread globally. The discussion was led by Mr. Russell Wolff, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of ESPN International and Greg Boyko, WAC CT Vice President and chief architect of the program.

This program was held coincidently at a time after the Red Sox had an epic implosion at the end of their season and had lost their long time manager Terry Francona. We were aware of the whispers that Bobby V was being considered as the next manager of the Sox and thought it was at the most a very interesting twist to our program. The program was a great success, despite a slightly smaller audience than we expected due to the terrible storm that left most of our community out of power for more than a week. But as November progressed and we heard that the Sox were seriously considering Valentine, we wondered were we going to be part of baseball history? We then heard the job was between Bobby V and one other candidate, we got even more excited and wondered were we there at the beginning? Then the announcement came, it was confirmed Bobby Valentine is the next manager of the Boston Red Sox! It was true we were there at the beginning. What took us even more by surprise was the overwhelming amount of articles in the national press that mentioned the first meeting between Valentine and Lucchino taking place in Hartford at the World Affairs Council. ( links to just some of them are below). The office was a buzz in excitement as yet more articles mentioning WAC CT kept appearing. YES WAC friends we are now part of baseball history.

We are very much looking forward to an exciting spring training season and a very exciting baseball season. We wish Bobby V much luck in his new position and GO SOX!!! We will be watching.