Just last night I was reading about the Yankees’ executives meetings in Tampa. It all seemed so odd – the execs were holed up in one of the Steinbrenner family compounds, only surfacing to tip the Domino’s man (I figure the Yankees would eat Domino’s… that just seems to fit) and perhaps even to breathe unrecycled air before diving back underground.
Meanwhile, outside the self-important NYC media gathered to delve so deeply into the most important story involving The Empire, watching from just off the Steinbrenner property line as if they were witnessing the election of a pope.
If the White House press corps worked half as hard as the Yankees beat writers, who knows how the world situation might be right now. But I know one thing for certain – President Gore would have his hands for with those Yankees scribes, that’s for sure.
But in going through the frantic and breathless dispatches from Tampa as if it were Ed Murrow describing the “orchestrated hell” of the English Lancasters’ raid on Berlin in December of 1943, I thought to myself, “Geez, what an awful thing to do to yourself.”
And I wasn’t just thinking about the NYC media staked out in Tampa. Nope, those jackals can take care of themselves. Instead, I was thinking about Joe Torre.
What did Joe Torre do to be treated this way? Was winning all of those baseball games and going to the playoffs all of those years really so bad?
Answer: Yes.
After 12 seasons with the Yankees in which every single one of them ended in the playoffs, including four World Series victories and six American League pennants, Torre was being dangled for the sharks by the team’s brass as if he were chum at the bottom of a metal bucket. Apparently that’s what 12 straight playoff appearances and a 1,173-767 regular-season record gets a guy like Torre.
Guys with half the accomplishments but 10 times the ego get to strut around like models on the runway. Only instead of thin and stylish women, we get to watch tired, frumpy and pasty middle-aged white guys bluster on using words like “tradition” and “history.”
What, they just can’t say, “Thank you… ” and leave Torre the hell alone?
Obviously not. Instead, Steinbrenner and his minions held meetings about having meetings that were followed up with the meetings in Tampa. All the while Torre was left to twist in the wind.
That is until today. Finally, Torre did the admirable thing and told the Yanks to take their managerial job and the 12 consecutive playoff appearances – a run that neither Miller Huggins, Joe McCarthy nor Casey Stengel could touch – and stick it.
Oh, the Yankees wanted Torre back for 2008. At least that’s what they will say of the one-year, $5 million deal Torre was offered. To “motivate” Torre, team president Randy Levine explained that the one-year deal was loaded with incentives contingent upon a World Series appearance.
“We thought that we need to go to a performance-based model, having nothing to do with Joe Torre's character, integrity or ability,” Levine. “We just think it's important to motivate people.”
Yes, because a grown man who was paid $2.5 million more than the offer in 2007 who has been in the Major Leagues since turning 19 in 1960 needs motivation. Yes, thank Randy Levine for being the one to make that slacker Joe Torre to see things the proper way. Heck, if Torre would have done things Levine’s way they would have won the World Series twice in 1998.
Geez…
Obviously, the Yankees made Torre and offer he had to refuse. Clearly they want to go in another direction, which is the team’s prerogative. After all, Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi, Tony La Russa and Bobby Valentine are circling like buzzards to pick at Torre’s carcass. But Torre’s departure likely means the official end of the Yankees’ more –than-a-decade long run at the top of baseball. Alex Rodriguez, the likely MVP of the American League, will probably opt out of his contract with Torre gone. It’s also likely that others will follow A-Rod out the door, like top closer Mariano Rivera, catcher Jorge Posada and lefty starting pitcher Andy Pettitte.
But Scott Boras, the agent for Rodriguez says Torre had to turn down the deal lest the remaining players think of him as “weak.”
“It is difficult, near impossible, to accept a salary cut,” Boras told the Associated Press. “Successful people can afford their principles. They understand if they accept the position, there is a great risk the message to all under him is dissatisfaction.”
Then there is that whole fired-for-winning chestnut. It’s doubtful that DreamWorks Studios could have conjured up the special affects to make Torre’s situation even halfway believable. Better yet, maybe Spielberg and the gang can figure out a scenario in which Larry Bowa takes over as manager of the Yankees.
Please, please, please, please, please...