Joe Torre does not just walk. He walks on water. Joe Torre
does not just speak. He speaks in parables. Joe Torre does not
just make decisions. He makes the proper decisions. Right?
Torre has been so successful as manager of the Yankees for the
past five years that he admitted there were some people who
spook him because they want to canonize him. St. Joseph, the
new patron saint in pinstripes.
It is sacrilegious to compare a manager to someone whose
life was so venerated that he achieved sainthood, and it is
especially damning when the manager's sister is a nun, but
this comparison is offered merely to cite how Torre is often
viewed now that he has four World Series rings. Rings, by the
way, that Torre is reluctant to wear because they might
attract attention from the three or four people who do not
recognize him.
Obviously, Torre is fallible like everyone else and is
willing to concede some of his errors, as a manager and a
person. Still, his mistakes in October, when he is mostly
judged, are rare. Bring us to baseball's Promised Land, Joe,
the Yankee faithful beg. And, regardless of the immense
payroll, the talented roster and the closer named Mariano
Rivera, Torre has done it. Four times in five seasons, his
choices have helped answer the baseball prayers of millions.
''The people are great to me, but I'm uncomfortable with
some of it,'' Torre said. ''I'm not aggravated by it. I'm
uncomfortable. People, they're canonizing me. I'm just very
uneasy with that. I'm uncomfortable when they tell me all the
good things I represent. I don't know what to do. So I shake
my head and I thank them because nobody could live up to some
of those things they've got me representing.''
As Torre begins his sixth season with the Yankees, he is in
discussions with George Steinbrenner, the team's principal
owner, to manage for at least two more years, and he has said
that he wants to remain with the organization after he retires
from scrawling names on lineup cards. He has gone from a
55-year-old who never thought he would manage again, and whose
hiring was trumpeted by a back-page headline that said
''Clueless Joe,'' to a 60-year-old whose run at the end of his
career will probably elevate him into the Hall of Fame.
So much has changed around him. Torre made it to the World
Series for the first time in 32 seasons in 1996, his inaugural
season with the Yankees, and he now has more titles than all
but three managers. He lost a brother and shepherded another
through a heart transplant in his first year as manager, and
then overcame prostate cancer in 1999. He became a father
again, less than 10 years shy of his first Social Security
check. His salary soared from $500,000 to $3 million and will
probably climb to $5 million or more soon.
''When people think about the Yankees,'' Paul O'Neill said,
''they think about Joe Torre.''
Through it all, he has tried not to change. He admitted
that he was glad this happened later in his life because he
was spoiled, irresponsible and obstinate in his early years as
a major league player and said, ''I wouldn't have been able to
handle this then.'' Frank Torre said he went two years
ignoring his younger brother Joe because of the way he
mistreated their mother. Now Joe Torre believes he handles
life and these changes adeptly.
But has he remained the same average Joe?
Sitting in a dugout at Legends Field in Tampa, Fla., Torre
pondered the question. Could anyone remain the same after
these life-altering events? He responded gradually, seeming to
sift through five years he called ''absolutely remarkable.''
''I'd like to believe I haven't changed,'' Torre said.
''It's tough not to feel different. I certainly feel different
than I did five years ago. I was excited about having an
opportunity to manage a team that had a chance to go
somewhere. I never got caught up in the clueless Joe stuff. It
never bothered me. The fact that I was asked to manage this
club overrode that stuff.''
The people who spend the most time with Torre say he is no
different, except he is more distant because of the demands of
a bulging schedule. Frank Torre said, ''His old friends
complain because he doesn't communicate with them as much, but
it's a matter of understanding what he has to do.'' Ali, Joe's
wife, said surviving cancer and being a father at an older age
have helped to ground Torre. ''He still does the dishes,'' she
said. ''In fact, he did them last night.'' The reporters who
cover Torre say he is readily accessible in group interviews
and provides eloquent answers. The former player in him,
however, occasionally stiffens over some baseball strategy
questions.
But what matters most is how the players view Torre, and
they said that he was the same man who talked about trust
during his first team meeting and still focused on it today.
He is realistic enough to say that winning in 1996 gave him a
leash he might not have otherwise had.
''This could go to your head, but not with Joe,'' Tino
Martinez said. ''He appreciates the success we've had, but he
doesn't take it for granted. To me, he's the same guy.''
Torre said no one had ever cautioned him that he was
changing. There is jealousy in some corners of the
organization, just as there was surely jealousy when Pat Riley
won titles in Los Angeles and when Mike Shanahan won them in
Denver. More than any other Yankee, Torre has basked in the
adulation of being a champion, from being a co-author of two
books to doing a television movie (which he regrets) to
endorsing several products.
Steinbrenner jabbed Torre this February when he said:
''This is an organization. It's not me. It's not Joe.''
Streinbrenner, who has long reveled in being the most
prominent Yankee, now has a very successful and very popular
manager who is nearly impossible to criticize. When
Steinbrenner was asked about Torre, he said: ''All I'll say is
I have a better relationship with him than I've had with any
other manager. That's all you'll get out of me.''
Torre senses that people have ''changed in their
perception'' of him and that unsettles him. His regular
dentist was nervous as he hovered over Torre after the Yankees
won in 1999, and Torre reminded the dentist that he was the
same man who reclined for a cleaning six months earlier. It is
important to Torre not to be condescending, although he
acknowledged that ''different people perceive you in different
ways.''
When Torre strides across Yankee Stadium in a Yankee jacket
or glides across a dais in a tuxedo, he is part Bill Clinton,
part Clint Eastwood and part Walter Cronkite: there is
confidence, toughness and trustworthiness oozing from him. He
has a presence that has magnified since he arrived in the
Bronx, and he has used his calm demeanor and instinctive
decisions to mold the Yankees into the best team in baseball.
No one wanted to pay Torre $50,000 for an appearance five
years ago. The endless positive changes cause Torre, who has
three children from two previous marriages and a 5-year-old
daughter, Andrea, with his current wife, Ali, to soul search,
too.
''Right at this point in time I want to spend time with my
daughter,'' he said. ''I didn't do it with my other kids,
probably because I was too much into myself as a player. I
enjoy being with my daughter, vacationing with my wife. It's a
great life.''
While Torre's life has changed and he has tried to remain
consistent, his relationship with Steinbrenner has also
evolved. Torre has as much security as any manager could have
in Steinbrenner's dictatorial world and, though some people
might make Torre feel uncomfortable by treating him like a
saint, Torre is really more comfortable than ever. He is
untouchable now.
''You're right,'' Torre said, his words floating across a
sunny spring day. ''Even if he fired me, he can't do anything
to me. To me, what I've accomplished is pretty special. Yeah,
I guess you could say he's stuck with me. In two ways, he
stuck with me and now he's stuck with me.''
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