Joe Torre's place in Yankee lore cannot be written off

By Mike Lupica
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
Tuesday, February 3rd 2009, 9:25 PM

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It should not be asked whether Joe Torre deserves plaque among Yankee greats, question is when will it get done.

The idea that there could be a new Yankee Stadium or any Yankee Stadium without Joe Torre being in it, without him having a plaque at Monument Park and without having his No. 6 retired is ridiculous. It is as ridiculous as the hysteria, especially the original hysteria, over Torre's new book.

The Yankees pride themselves on having the biggest name in sports, being the biggest in everything, in history and payroll and price of new stadiums and all the rest of it. When it came time to build themselves a baseball Versailles across 161st St. from the old Stadium, it had to be the biggest and gaudiest baseball stadium ever built. To treat Torre like some enemy of the state now would be incredibly small.

One of the reasons the business grew the way it did after 1996 was that Torre helped grow it, as the top top-manager in sports for most of that time. And that doesn't change because of this book.

They are going to have all their luxury suites at the new Stadium, and the most expensive tickets known to man, even though a lot of those aren't moving the way they wanted them to, believe me, or they wouldn't suddenly be offering 20- and 40-game plans all of a sudden. But how can you bring all that history across the street and not bring Torre with it?

Hal Steinbrenner is the one who ought to rise above all this, and start by reading "The Yankee Years," written by Torre and Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. He doesn't have to give Joe Torre his day at the new Yankee Stadium this year, or even give an exact date when the Yankees plan to do that. He can say the Yankees are going to wait until Torre has retired from the Dodgers and retired from managing.

But you better believe Joe Torre better get a day.

It doesn't mean you have to love his book, or even love Torre. He isn't some kind of living saint because he won four World Series in five years out of the box here. It doesn't mean he is above criticism, even though you want to do better than somebody like Boomer Wells, who clearly still has the sensibilities of a bouncer.

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Torre won three titles in a row - and four total - as Yankee skipper ...

But Torre is not less a Yankee because of this book, he has not somehow diminished his own Yankee legend, he hasn't changed his status as someone who became more the face of the New York Yankees than any manager in the history of the team.

There was a morning a few years ago when I sat with him in the visiting manager's office at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., before a spring training game. He had been telling stories that day about Warren Spahn, and talking about a dinner he'd had the night before at a restaurant we both knew in Jupiter, called Carmine's.

That day the subject came back around to something people had said about Joe Torre for a long time, even after his team had stopped winning the World Series, about how he made it harder than it had ever been for people to be Yankee haters.

"I don't think it was just me," Torre said that day. "I think we made it harder for people to hate the Yankees."

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... and the "The Yankee Years" doesn't change that.

Casey Stengel and Joe McCarthy won more World Series for the Yankees. Torre still goes right in there with them for winning four World Series in a time when you had to win three playoff series and 11 games in October to do that. Maybe there will be another baseball team to do that again someday, but the way the sport is balanced out now, you wonder how that can ever happen.

He wasn't perfect, and when things started to go wrong for the Yankees in October, he made his share of mistakes and when he did leave, it was probably time for him to go. He wasn't loved by everybody, and when the Yankees started to lose in the first round of the playoffs even with their annual $200 million payroll, Yankee fans started to love him a little less than they used to.

And yet for so much of Joe Torre's time in New York, he felt like the biggest guy in town, like somebody who could have run for mayor and won. And now he's supposed to be some kind of bum because he hurt Brian Cashman's feelings, or Randy Levine's, or Boomer Wells'? He's supposed to have burned the Willis Ave. Bridge because he offended Alex Rodriguez? Why, because A-Rod has done such a great job honoring the Yankee brand over the past five years?

Derek Jeter was the first of Torre's former players to say that maybe people ought to wait to read the book before they judge "Mr. Torre." Jorge Posada is in the Daily News now defending Torre.

And here is Jeter talking in "The Yankee Years":

"You know, we made it look easy. We knew it wasn't easy, but we made it look easy. And people automatically assume, 'Well, your payroll is this, and you've got this player and that player and this All-Star, that All-Star... you should win.' No, it just doesn't happen like that. You have to have a lot of things go right. We were in six World Series. It's not easy, you know what I mean? Nowadways? Six World Series in 12 years? That's tough to do, man."

They did make it look easy. The manager made it look easier than all of them, talking about it before the game, talking about it after the game, classing up the Yankees again. Give Joe Torre a day? Are you kidding? The Yankees could give him a week.