Torre rips the Yankees, ARod and GM Brian Cashman in a new book.

The quote function has run amuck.

 

And I'm NOT involved.

That Jets over Colts right there.

 

Guy,

Not to speak for Ben, but I think it's very different to offer a manager (like Torre) a one-year deal as opposed to a player (such as Pettitte).

Managers need the respect of their players to function effectively. If players think the manager has very little job security, that he's a lame duck, they're more likely to tune him out. And a manager with a mere one-year deal is indeed a potential lame duck, especially on a team like the Yankees and a market like New York. If the team is struggling in June, isn't it far easier to fire a guy if he only has a few months of salary left to swallow rather than two or three years? Players know that as well as anyone.

Players, on the other hand, don't get fired. They may get traded, but generally speaking they'll still have a big-league job. A starting pitcher's success isn't nearly as dependent on whether all the other players listen to him and respect him as a manager's is. The shortstop isn't going to give half-effort on a ground ball because he's not sure whether the pitcher will be with the team next year; that's just the business of playing pro sports. But a shortstop may well tune out the manager if he figures he's as good as gone.

Here's another question I had at the time. The Yanks tried to spin their offer of a one-year deal to Torre as something perfectly reasonable. We want to pay for performance, there's lot of bonuses to win championships like we expect, this team is built to win, etc. They made it sound as if that's how they felt managers should best be incentivized, period.

So when they hired Girardi, why didn't they insist he sign a one-year deal? Because nobody hires a new manager on a one-year deal, since it undercuts his credibility in the clubhouse from day one. Only a manager desperate for a big-league job would take a new position on a one-year deal, because it's insulting. And to not treat Joe Torre even as well as some newbie who hasn't won a single game managing for your team, never mind four world titles and 13-odd straight trips to the playoffs, is even more insulting in my book.

IMO, Yanks brass suspected how Torre would view a one-year offer, coupled with a significant pay cut. If he surprised them and accepted, they would have been fine with that, since he was a darn good manager after all. But if he rebuffed them as expected, even better. They wanted to move on.

 

Suspected?

 

"Strongly suspected"?

I'd say "knew," but who can truly know what lurks in another man's heart?

 

It's typically fairly easy to read manipulative megalomaniacs, and the Steinbrenners are all of that.

 

http://share.triangle.com/sites/share-uda.triangle.com/files/images/TheShadow.preview.jpg

 

WFW.

Also, if this book is Verducci's reporting and writing, with Torre merely one of many sources, then Torre's name shouldn't be on the cover. It leads the reader to believe that Torre co-authored this book, which clearly is not the case. Torre's name is out there, with top billing, to sell more copies, but then he claims no responsibility for the more inflammatory portions of the book? The whole thing is very misleading. I respect both Torre and Verducci, but neither one covered himself in glory on this one.

 

What I don't understand at all is why Joe is doing the book tour thing. With all the money he has made and with all he has on his plate with spring training starting why deal with this shit.

 

Roy from Park Slope, you're next.

 

Finally finished "The Yankee Years". Good book with lots of intersted detail of the Torre error.

My one criticism is that the book jumps around too much and does not follow a real chronological order of the events as they happened. It kind of makes the book hard to follow.

You might be reading a chapter about 1998 season and then find mixed in is an antidote from 2003. This happens all over the book.