This might be the most Bobby Valentine quote ever released into the wild:

I was just trying to smooth it over. I guess I didn't.

No, not so much. Valentine made comments that Kevin Youkilis wasn't "as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past for some reason," and according to an apology that Valentine gave to Youkilis, which the manager recounted at a pre-game press conference, that wasn't how he meant it at all.

"I think the question was 'It's not Youk-like the way he's playing, " Valentine said in his pregame news conference. "I think that was the question I answered. I should have answered that his swing is not where he wants it to be, his swing is frustrating, it affects the emotion."

"I don't know what the reason is because I haven't been here long enough. I don't know why the swing is not where it wants to be and he's not banging as many helmets. I thought it was rather innocuous," Valentine added.

Maybe. Probably not! But maybe. We'll probably all forget about this in a week now that Valentine has made an apology, and only Youkilis and Valentine will know if things can truly be swept under the rug in a town where people like to look under the rug for juicy, juicy baseball gossip.