ON THAT clear evening barely 10 months back — when he was still pretending that his hair was brown, when the mere opportunity made him emotional, and when the general manager, president and principal owner all publicly professed a belief they'd found the right man for the job — Bobby Valentine warned us all.

“I am not the genius that I've heard people refer to me as,” he said. “I am not the polarizing guy that people refer to me as. I'm not the monster that breathes fire that some people have referred to me as.”

The Red Sox had reasons to hope they were hiring someone who was in some part all three, coming off a cataclysmic September collapse that left the club needing baseball smarts, needing someone capable of unifying, needing cages to be rattled. But Valentine was really all those things in reputation only, as he said himself during the December press conference where he was announced as the franchise's 45th manager.

And that's the reason the search for the 46th is already under way.

With an afternoon press release that supposedly followed a morning meeting, but was truthfully months in the making, the Red Sox officially announced Thursday that Valentine had been fired after finishing his lone season in Fenway's manager's office with more losses than all but one Sox team since 1932, and steering Boston to last place for the first time in two decades.

“This year's won-loss record reflects a season of agony,” said team President/CEO Larry Lucchino. “It begs for changes, some of which have already transpired. More will come. We are determined to fix that which is broken and return the Red Sox to the level of success we have experienced over the past decade.”

Meriden-bred General Manager Ben Cherington officially announced the news of the firing, just as he did the hiring, but it's widely believed that Valentine was actually Lucchino's hand-picked choice after a lengthy process last fall — and what a poor choice it proved to be, practically from the start.

Valentine arrived with a track record of enacting immediate improvement from the teams he inherited in Texas and New York, then entered spring training full of enthusiasm and insistent upon instilling the fundamentals. He biked in, bounced from field to field, brought the energy of a man who'd been waiting 10 years for such an opportunity.

It was at that point that he needed to grab the reins of this team, to connect with his players, to convince them he wasn't the loose cannon portrayed by the reputation preceding him. But it wasn't long before some were questioning his handling of players, their fears first materializing in his alleged verbal undressing of Mike Aviles during an infield drill early in spring training.

Then came his criticism of Kevin Youkilis, which prompted Dustin Pedroia to respond. Then there was his repeated mispronouncing of his players' names, which naturally prompted questions about how well he knew the enemy if he didn't know his own. Then there were the many reports of his inability to coalesce his clubhouse, which prompted team meetings, text messages to ownership and prolonged toxicity.

All the while, the team played terrible baseball. They started 4-10, never climbed more than five games above .500, then won only 16 of their final 57 — and though injuries were surely a factor, as Valentine was forced to use a team-record 56 players without once getting to pen the lineup he envisioned when he took the job, it doesn't absolve him from the fact he failed to do the job as he himself laid it out last December.

He failed to establish the “culture of excellence” he promised then, never exorcising the haunting ghosts of last September.

He failed to maximize the resources that inspired him to declare that “the talent level and the players that we have in this organization, I think, is a gift to anyone. And I'm the receiver of that gift.” In fact, by last month, he griped to the press that his September roster was the worst in baseball history.

He failed to apply the lessons he supposedly learned in Japan, which taught him that to avoid misinterpretation “you have to either say it again or say it differently to make sure the message is received.” He was consistently forced to clarify things he said publicly, and privately players complained that communication between them, him and the coaches was no clearer.

He failed to prove that claims he is motivated by “the desire to be excellent, the desire to do something special every day that I get up” was any more than lip service, given the mediocrity he let envelop his team.

And he failed to show he was a different guy than the one who was fired by the Mets in 2002, when chaos overran his clubhouse, things began spinning too fast, and he learned that “when they get spinning quickly sometimes they get out of control.”

The difference between those Mets and these Red Sox is that he never had control of the situation in Boston. He wasn't helped by the fact he was working under a disposable two-year contract, or the fact that the personality of his team was polluted. Cherington admitted “Bobby was dealt a difficult hand,” while principal owner John Henry said Valentine's effort was “deeply appreciated,” and Chairman Tom Werner said “we are all collectively responsible for the team's performance” in thanking a manager he called “a baseball man through and through.”

A baseball man he may be. But he's certainly no genius. Nor fire-breathing dragon. And though he did ultimately prove polarizing, it was only because by the end there was nobody pulling the other way. Everyone knew Valentine had to go.

And most seemingly agree he never should've even been asked to come.

Dave D'Onofrio covers the Red Sox for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. His e-mail address is ddonof13@gmail.com.