What's Going on at Fenway?

It all seemed so cut and dried. The Red Sox pretty blatantly wanted Dale Sveum as their next manager. All they needed to do was offer him the job. But now it seems that the Cubs have swept in and made him their next manager. As Joel said, "I guess Theo and the Red Sox owners all really liked Sveum!" Once this came to light, the inevitable backtracking arose, including the owners saying that they "appear to want a candidate with more major league managerial experience."

I don't get it. I'm not sure why the Sox didn't step up and get Sveum if that's who they really wanted. And neither does hardballtalk.com, who rightly calls BS on these maneuvers:

[This] is sort of silly considering their entire managerial search thus far has been focused on guys who have not really managed in the Major Leagues that much. Gene Lamont has, but I don’t think anyone thought of him a a frontrunner for the job.  Rather, it was Sveum, Mike Maddux, Pete Mackanin, Torey Lovullo and Sandy Alomar Jr. None of whom have had a full time manager’s gig in the bigs.
But now they want someone totally different than that? Some guy who has a lot of major league experience? You’d think that if that were the case they would interviewed such beasts some time in the past few weeks.  Not that a ton of those guys exist. As Pete Abe notes:

Finding worthwhile candidates with experience could be difficult. There are former managers available such as Don Wakamatsu, Jim Riggleman or Trey Hillman. Another possibility would be ESPN analyst Bobby Valentine.

I know there are some Bobby Valentine rah-rah guys out there, but is anyone really inspired by that list?

The tendency of the Red Sox front office to try and rewrite history whenever they fail is starting to rub me the wrong way.