Joe Torre Plays Golf and Waits for Another Opportunity

With the Atlanta Braves coming off their second worst season in 42 years, the last man to lead the team to a pennant is spending the spring playing golf in California and wondering if he’ll ever manage a baseball team again.

Joe Torre, in his three years as manager of the Braves, compiled a record of 257-229, finishing first in the National League West in 1982 and second in ’83 and ’84.

He was then fired and replaced by Eddie Haas, a long-time manager in the Braves’ minor league system and a favorite of the Atlanta front office. Haas managed a 50-71 record before losing his job, as Atlanta headed for a record of 66-96. In the last 42 years, only the 1977 Braves, 66-101, were worse.

Now, veteran manager Chuck Tanner--who was 57-104 at Pittsburgh last season--has been brought in to pick up the pieces. And Torre, a part-time broadcaster for the Angels, concedes that he feels some measure of exoneration.

“Yeah, I left New York (fired by the Mets in 1981 after going 286-420 over five seasons). We hadn’t won, and I came to Atlanta and we won,” Torre said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal. “I got the same question in Atlanta then. People said to me, ‘Now do you think you’re a good manager?’

“I said, ‘Well, I thought I was a good manager in New York.’ I think with what we did in Atlanta in three years, I didn’t think any exoneration was needed.”

Torre, hitting golf balls in Palm Springs, readily admits that he’d rather be in somebody’s spring training camp, getting ready to manage in 1986.

Fourteen teams have had managerial openings since Torre was fired. Fourteen teams have passed him by.

“I felt I would have been offered a job by now,” Torre said. “But there’s not much you can do about it. If you sit around and think about it, you’re not going to think very highly of yourself.”

Torre was interviewed for jobs last year in Pittsburgh and Houston, but neither turned into a serious job offer.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t interview well. I tried to be as honest as I could. . . . I managed for eight years, and either you like what I do or you don’t like what I do.

“I just believe in both those jobs they were looking for guys who’ve had minor-league experience because they felt they have young clubs that need a lot of instruction. If anything has come out of the firing by the Braves, I guess it was the fact that supposedly I wasn’t working with the young players right or something.”

Indeed, Atlanta officials at the time of Haas’ hiring spoke of his minor league successes with young players like Gerald Perry and Brad Komminsk. But both those players floundered under Haas in the majors, and neither is a certainty to make the big league club this year.

Torre speaks now of his desire to be with a club “where I can work with a general manager, instead of for him.” Ironically, the Braves have just adopted such a set-up. Tanner shares the decision-making process with new General Manager Bobby Cox, who preceded Torre as field manager.

“I think Ted (Turner, the team owner) finally said to himself, ‘Let’s get some people in there who know baseball and leave it in their hands.’ And he’s hired two good ones,” Torre said.