Joe Torre's Story Deserves to Be Told

NEW YORK -- Joe Torre's name is on the book, but it's a fair estimate not even one-fourth of the words are actually his. He says he's read it six times, perusing line for line, scanning chapters for quotes or anecdotes that have caused so much fuss. It is clear the New York Yankees, Torre's former employer, aren't pleased with the book -- Torre's book -- and there is a decent chance their relationship is forever stained.

And yet, here is Torre, calmly navigating another hot-stove controversy the way he did for 12 always memorable, sometimes controversial seasons as manager of the Yankees. Taking refuge from a snowstorm building steam outside, Torre brushes a few icy flakes from his shoulder and tells me he "wouldn't change a thing."

The lines of fans snake around the interior of a bookstore in Manhattan's Midtown, and hundreds more huddle outside on Fifth Avenue, happy to wait hours for a chance to meet Torre and have him autograph a copy of The Yankee Years, written with Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. Torre smiles at a guy wearing a Yankee cap and puffy Yankee jacket who bravely shouts something about Torre violating the "clubhouse sanctity." The same guy soon will be pushing his way to the front of the queue, pen in hand, practically slobbering on the book he's just purchased for $26.95. Torre hasn't forgotten how to charm the hecklers.

"You ask what motivated me to write this book, well, it's that kind of passion for the Yankees," Torre says. "And I wanted to celebrate the years I spent in New York and allow fans to see the larger picture. I wanted them to feel like they were in the bowels of the ship with us.

"No doubt, it's not just my memories. It's a chronicle of baseball at a certain time. It's a piece of history that covers a lot of ground, including changes in baseball. It's not just my voice but it is my celebration of what to me was and always will be an extraordinary time."

Torre seems stunned to hear his reputation as a classy, team-first competitor has taken hits from sections of fans and media who question why he would collaborate on a book that doesn't portray the sainted Yankees as the best thing to happen to baseball since seams were sewn into a ball. Mostly those screaming about sanctity of clubhouses or boardrooms are the folks devouring everything in sight relating to their team. The Yankee Years is hardly a lascivious kiss-and-tell, or a remake of Ball Four. It's a shrewd insider look at America's most successful sporting franchise, and Torre no more owes the Yankees loyalty than the Yankees owed him.

Still, it's as if a season in Los Angeles, where Torre manages the Dodgers, helped erase knowledge of how life works in New York: things are leaked, there is outrage, lots of shouting on the radio and in the newspapers, more leaks, and the sun rises again. Torre should hardly be surprised when anything gets taken out of context.
Torre insists he would've collaborated with Verducci on the book even if he had been retained to manage the Yankees another year, rather than splitting with the team in a manner that sullied all involved. Only the last chapter, says Torre, "would be different," and it is of course in this final chapter, aptly called "The End," where Verducci, writing in the third person, details how Torre's relationship with general manager Brian Cashman disintegrated and the Torre Era ended, as Torre says now, "not with bitterness, but relief."

Cashman politely says he'd rather not comment on the book. Someone with knowledge of the inner workings of the Yankee hierarchy says the organization is livid with Torre for violating some sort of Yankee omerta, but what are they going to do, not include him in the ceremony during the last game at Yankee Stadium?

Oh, right.

Torre's success with the Yankees -- 12 straight playoff appearances, six pennants, four World Series titles -- earned him the right to recall his tenure however and whenever he chose. He's 68 and a cancer survivor, and no matter how healthy and fit he now appears, every day is a blessing. I've had many conversations with Torre over the years about his emotionally damaged childhood -- his father was physically abusive, and Torre's work with his Safe at Home foundation has more societal impact than any trophy ever will. Torre is a survivor, someone who learned late in life how destructive it is to keep emotion coiled tight.

So I believe him when he says he has "no regrets" -- over the book, over how his life with the Yankees ebbed and flowed. If he chooses to take some of the shine off his legacy as the protective, paternal face of the pinstripes, he can never be accused of not paying attention when others in the organization taught him how to handle the knife.

Randy Levine, team president, gets perhaps the harshest treatment of all from Torre's angle, especially on page 203 where, in the midst of an argument with George Steinbrenner about whether David Wells should be disciplined for writing a book about the Yankees -- and no, Boomer, irony is not a Flinstone vitamin -- Torre and Levine get into it over speakerphone.

Levine started to say something, but Torre immediately cut him off.

"Randy," Torre said, "shut the ... up."

The room went silent for a just a moment, a small moment, but one packed with awkwardness.

Said Torre, "I found out Randy had been trying to find a way to get rid of me from that moment on. Understood."

The vignettes are loaded with rich detail, flushed out in Torre's voice. There is the vivid picture of Kevin Brown curled into a corner of the clubhouse after a brutal outing, more truth about Wells being baseball's biggest diva and Roger Clemens receiving special treatment and, of course, the well-excerpted portrayal of Alex Rodriguez that includes a clubhouse fractured by A-Rod's presence. In a voice that is distinctly not Torre's, A-Rod is said to have a "single white female" crush on Derek Jeter. Torre recalls how teammates and coaches called A-Rod "A-Fraud," a tidbit Torre might have hesitated to reveal if it hadn't already been chronicled in the New York newspapers hundreds of times.

Indeed, I can think of a handful of moments when I was in a scrum around A-Rod's locker either before or after a game, and coach Larry Bowa would walk by and make a loud wisecrack. "Who's it going to be today, A-Rod or A-Fraud?" Bowa might yell, and A-Rod would almost always laugh. Years ago, the tabloid back pages exhausted usage of puns on A-Fraud, so anyone who says they weren't aware of the nickname or thinks Torre broke some sort of clubhouse code by repeating it is either disingenuous or hasn't learned to read.

"I don't believe in my heart that I violated anything," Torre says. "Yeah, I talked about stuff that went on in the clubhouse but if you read more than excerpts you'll see it in the correct context."

Torre says he respects any parts of the book Verducci wrote on his own, including the portions where Mike Mussina dissects Mariano Rivera. Nor does Torre seem too concerned that his current players in the Dodgers system might now be hesitant to confide in him. Indeed, Torre is especially circumspect in the book over issues like performance enhancing drugs, allowing Verducci, in a chapter titled "Getting an Edge," to explain why the Yankees (like other teams, including the Mets) allowed steroid-pushers on staff and fielded rosters with players pumped up on illegal drugs. The line about Yankee trainer Steve Donahue rubbing "the hottest possible liniment on (Clemens') testicles" was especially revolting.

Torre says, in retrospect, he should have paid more attention to the spread of PEDs, that he didn't realize their use was so wide-spread until the Mitchell report came out. "Maybe I didn't want to see it," he admits, which is exactly what he used to tell reporters in his office, off the record, when we were reporting on the proliferation of steroids in baseball long before it became a common part of the sport's fabric.

If the book is Torre's way of getting even, he is doing so with a dull knife. If the Yankees retaliate by never retiring his number or honoring him with the proverbial day, they will again prove to be as petty and vindictive as they were when Yogi Berra was sent into exile.

"I gave them the best years of my professional life," Torre says. The Yankee Years were Joe Torre's years, and he deserves to re-tell them however he sees fit.