Mike Lupica: No more magic left at Stadium for Yanks, Joe Torre

Tuesday, October 9th 2007, 4:18 AM
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He had taken this walk so many times before, out the back door of his office at Yankee Stadium, past a utility closet, then down the famous blue line painted into the concrete floor down here, the blue line that leads you to the Yankee clubhouse when you are coming from the other direction. But now Joe Torre was taking this long walk the other way, a bottle of water in his hands, Yankees PR man Jason Zillo in front of him, the longest walk Torre had taken in all his Yankee Octobers, maybe the last one he would ever take as the Yankee manager.

Another Yankee season had ended in the first round, for the third year in a row. It had ended 6-4 for the Indians in Game 4; ended in the glove of Cleveland catcher Kelly Shoppach, ended after a heart attack of a relief pitcher from Cleveland named Joe Borowski had somehow managed to get three outs against the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth of an October baseball game, once the hardest three outs in this world to get.

Just no more. And maybe never again for Joe Torre as Yankee manager.

Bobby Abreu had given the people left at Yankee Stadium, and there were a lot of them still left as the game tried to get to midnight, one last jolt and one last thrill with one out in the ninth, hitting the last Yankee home run of the baseball season. That one brought the Yankees to within two runs. And Alex Rodriguez, who had finally hit a home run in the postseason, hit one for the first time in a very long time, came to the plate. And he brought hope with him.

But then A-Rod flew out to right. That left it up to Jorge Posada, the catcher who had the season of his life as the Yankees were coming from 14 games behind and trying to catch the Boston Red Sox. Posada then struck out. The ball was in Shoppach's glove and the Indians were running from everywhere for Borowski, the way Torre's Yankees used to run for Mo Rivera after he got the last out of the big game.

Posada had made the last out in October before, in the last game of the 2003 World Series against the Marlins. And that night Torre took this exact same walk along the blue line, into the interview room, another class appearance in there, after about a hundred of them as the Yankee manager, in the years when he was winning four World Series and losing two others and always making the playoffs. That night he went looking for the Marlins manager, Jack McKeon, when he was done. Walked that line a little more.

"I know how hard it is to do this," Joe Torre said. I remember him smiling that night and saying, "I never thought it was easy."

The owner of the team, George Steinbrenner, says that Torre will be fired now that the Yankees can't make it out of the first round. He said it big and loud the Saturday the Yankees lost to the Tigers in Detroit last year, and was ready to bang Torre right out of the job then before Brian Cashman, the Yankees general manager, talked him out of it. And when he didn't fire Torre then, didn't fire him after first-round losses to the Angels in '05 and the Tigers and the worst loss in the history of the Yankees - losing the 2004 American League Championship Series after being ahead three games to none - you thought that Torre's destiny was no longer tied into how his team did once it made the playoffs.

Now the old man says it is. Who knows if he meant it? Who knows what he does or doesn't mean at the age of 77, after so few public appearances in the last year that you can count them on one hand? But if this was the last night of Joe Torre's managerial career, a career that goes in with the greatest in the history of the greatest team in baseball history, in there with Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, he went out with grace last night, even if his team did not.
As soon as he got into the interview room, before he got asked a question, he remembered to congratulate the other manager, a young guy named Eric Wedge.

"I want to congratulate Eric for the way he brought his team back," Torre said. "You make a mistake against them and they beat your brains out."

They did that to Chien-Ming Wang, Torre's starter, and Mike Mussina, who came in because Wang couldn't even get an out in the second inning. It was 6-1 after the top of the fourth, and even though the Yankees got a run here and a run there and finally got to 6-4 in the ninth, they could not come all the way back against the Indians in this game or in this series, the way they couldn't quite finish the job against the Red Sox.

And now it was over and it seems to be over unless there is another reprieve from Steinbrenner and Joe Torre was summing up everything that happened here during the years when he did not just make the Yankees winners again, but made them classy again.

"They were 12 years that felt 10 minutes long," Torre said.

A few minutes later he said, "You think it's going to last forever."

Once you thought Torre's Yankees were going to win forever. No more. Indians 6, Yankees 4.

The door to the interview room opened, Torre walked through it, back along that line. There had been other long walks for him at Yankee Stadium. Never one like this.