Freshly deposed Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine took the blame for Boston’s awful season when he was interviewed by Bob Costas on “Costas Tonight” on the NBC Sports Network on Tuesday.

“I think it was all my fault,” Valentine said. “… I got paid for this stuff not to happen.”

But he also had a little blame to spread around. For example, there was this about how designated hitter David Ortiz quit on the team (via Hardball Talk):

“David Ortiz came back after spending about six weeks on the disabled list, and we thought it was only going to be a week. He got two hits the first two times up, drove in a couple runs; we were off to the races. Then he realized that this trade meant that we’re not going to run this race and we’re not even going to finish the race properly and he decided not to play anymore. I think at that time it was all downhill from there.”

So Ortiz was milking his first injury and then faked a second injury?

Valentine went back to how his coaching staff was undermining him.

“I should have … made sure that the coaches were going to be the guys that were my guys.  … You know what coaches are? They’re your communication line. Your attitude filters down to the players through the coaches and their attitudes, their questions, their kinds of stress filters up through the coaches. I think we had some snags, the lines weren’t flowing the way they should have.”

Valentine didn’t accept the idea of many observers that he was always a bad fit with the Red Sox and it was never going to work.

“It really wasn’t destined to happen,” he said, then mentioned the string of injuries that hampered the team. “… I don’t think it was destiny. It was a lot of lousy things that happened.”