Friday, November 2, 2007
New York Yankees manager Joe Torre (R) speaks to a crowd at the U.S. Army Zama Camp as catcher Joe Girardi listens in Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, in this March 28, 2004 file photo.
NEW YORK -- Joe Torre must have used Scott Boras in his negotiations with the Dodgers. Four days after Alex Rodriguez upstaged the World Series, Torre pulled his old office rug out from under Joe Girardi, stealing the day before his former catcher could settle behind his former desk.
Six hours and 3,000 miles removed from Girardi's introduction at the Stadium, Dodgers GM Ned Colletti was on a conference call confirming that Torre had officially surrendered his martyrdom only two days after Grady Little's career was thrown from a roof.
Colletti allowed that he started speaking with Torre before Little's resignation. As it turned out, this transition was about as subtle as Pat Riley's hostile takeover of Stan Van Gundy's job in Miami.
Little's tale of personal reasons and mutual agreements is no more believable now than Van Gundy's was then. Torre has been forever celebrated in this column for his common decency and simple grace, but no, this wasn't his proudest hour.
To borrow a word Torre used in a Clueless Joe moment on David Letterman's show Monday night, the timing of his appointment was "suspicious."
On Letterman, Torre dismissed a report that he'd reached an agreement in principle with the Dodgers, and mocked the accuracy rate of your average daily paper. "Well, the Dodgers have a contract," Torre said, "I mean, a manager."
The Dodgers no longer had a manager the very next day.
Now they have a good one in 67-year-old Joe Torre, a four-time champ who signed a three-year deal worth $13 million, a significant upgrade on the one-year, $5 million guarantee the Yankees offered him for a 13th season, an incentives-laced bid Torre called "an insult."
It didn't look quite so insulting after reports surfaced in The New York Times and on SI.com detailing the incentives in Torre's previous contracts.
Whatever. The Yankees still should've offered Torre a two-year deal; he'd earned that much. But Torre's decision to reject the one-year contract could be viewed through an entirely different prism if he already had an inkling that greener grass was waiting out West.
Asked if the Dodgers had any contact with Torre between the Yankees' AL Division Series loss to Cleveland and their manager's fateful plane ride to Tampa, Colletti said, "Zero."
Zero had a short shelf life. Soon enough, the two sides were breaking bread.
"So you really want to get back into something like this when you have the opportunity to probably do different things?" Colletti would ask Torre.
The Brooklyn-born Giants fan looked Colletti in the eye.
"There's no doubt in my mind what I want to do and where I want to do it," Torre told him.
Yes, they met face to face, and yes, Torre also found time to sit down with Dodgers owner Frank McCourt. Colletti estimated that the organization's talks with Torre opened "four days ago, maybe," which would've been Sunday, the day A-Rod checked into Game 4 of the World Series by checking out of the Bronx.
It was also a day when Grady Little remained in the Dodgers' employ.
"In respect to Grady," Colletti said of his candidate for a job that wasn't open, "[Torre] just wanted to know what the thought process was and where we were at. And I laid it out to him exactly the way it was."
Colletti said he entered his talks with Torre "probably more curious than hopeful." At the end of the first round, the Dodgers GM said, "I was more hopeful than curious."
Torre made it clear he absolutely wanted the job.
"Having grown up in Brooklyn," Torre said in a statement Thursday, "I have a great understanding of the history of the Dodger organization and I am committed to bringing a world championship back to Los Angeles. I consider it an honor to be a part of this organization, which is one of the most storied franchises in all of sports."
Maybe Little would've been forced out even if Torre told the Dodgers thanks, but no thanks. Or maybe Colletti would've surveyed a thin field of replacements, realized that the two men he wanted – Girardi and Torre, apparently in that order – were off the board, and decided that Little deserved one more shot at healing his fractured clubhouse.
Either way, Torre should've told the Dodgers the following: I can't talk to you unless and until your manager's job is open. The same goes for Girardi, by the way.
Even if that isn't the way business is often done in big league sports anymore, that's the way honorable men should conduct themselves. How did Torre feel when last year George Steinbrenner all but sent Lou Piniella to his favorite tailor to get sized for pinstripes?
Grady Little? As Boston's manager, he thought he'd seen enough of Torre by the close of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. But this one had to hurt. Bud Selig didn't even force the Dodgers to interview a minority candidate. Nobody wanted to slow the Torre train to Tinseltown.
Joe Cool will be bringing along Don Mattingly, and Colletti might as well have named him Torre's successor. The idea of grooming a replacement for a man of Torre's age, Colletti said, "was one of the key components to [the deal]."
Who knows, maybe A-Rod isn't far behind. His agent, Boras, surely has to be impressed with Torre's work in L.A. so far.
On Girardi's big day in the Bronx, his former manager upstaged him. Joe Torre didn't handle the end of Little's reign any better than the Yankees handled the end of his.
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