Heart Of The Yankees

An older sister gave Joe Torre his first baseball glove when he was 10. He is 56 now, manager of the New York Yankees. She is Sister Marguerite, 64, principal of the Nativity Grammar School in Brooklyn.

They embraced amid the stench of cheap champagne in the Yankee clubhouse at Baltimore’s Camden Yards on Sunday and she smiled and said, “I wanted to give him rosary beads but I knew he’d find more use for the glove.”

The boy from Brooklyn seemed to have the whole neighborhood in his office as he celebrated the Yankees’ American League pennant. Wife Alice and his two sisters at his side, his 9-month-old daughter in his arms, tears and cheers abundant.

“It’s indescribable,” Torre said of his emotions, a long way from that first glove but never far from the dream that came with it and has now become reality.

After playing and managing more than 4,200 major league games, baseball’s longest such drought, he is going to the World Series for the first time.

He has survived the mine field that Yankee managers traverse daily and won the respect of his players with a calm, steady, personal approach.

All those years of envy, of not watching the World Series on television “because it was like watching somebody else eat a hot fudge sundae,” and now Torre gets his licks.

How sweet.

It is his best year.

It is also his worst.

A brother, Rocco, died of a heart attack in July.

Another brother, Frank, has been in Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center here for 11 weeks, waiting for a heart transplant.

“Joy and sorrow are often intertwined in life,” Sister Marguerite said.

Torre agrees.

“There’s no question that my job here is a diversion that helps me deal with the grieving,” he said. “My wife accuses me of not grieving yet for Rocco and I’m sure that’s true. I had a dream the other night where I heard someone knocking at the door and when I opened it Rocco was standing there. I woke up in a sweat.

“We’re a very close family. I talk to Frank twice a day, every day. He’s always been my biggest booster and critic, a father figure. He was very sick in Miami before they brought him to New York and got him on 24-hour medication that stabilized his condition, but he’s stuck in the hospital and he needs the transplant.

“When you think about what’s going on, a brother dead and another waiting for a heart, and you’re out there grinding your teeth about a baseball game, it does kind of keep things in perspective as far as what baseball is all about and what life is all about.”

Frank Torre, his spirit pumping, has been moving up on the priority list.

A new heart, he said by phone from the hospital, could be available any day, but he laughed and said, “It’s not like shopping at Macy’s.”

In the meantime, he went on, the interminable wait has been eased by the ability to follow the Yankees on radio and television.

“That’s probably what has kept me alive,” he said. “I haven’t had time to feel sorry for myself. As sick as I’ve been at times, the wait here would have been much more disturbing if I hadn’t been able to follow the Yankees.

“There were times it was taxing on my weak heart, but the results are spectacular. My kid brother is going to the World Series and I couldn’t be more excited.

“I know how badly he wanted it, and now the monkey is off his back. And having it happen in New York, our hometown, makes it doubly exciting. There’s a lot of things about the city you can criticize, but when it comes alive like this, it’s electric.”

Joe Torre grew up in Brooklyn--his sister, Rae, still lives in the house near the skin baseball diamonds of Marine Park--at a time when the World Series seemed to be a New York birthright. If the Yankees weren’t playing in it, the Dodgers or Giants were. He was a Giants’ fan, but he saw World Series games in Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, and was in Yankee Stadium when Don Larsen threw his perfect game.

He also went to the 1957 and ’58 World Series games at Yankee Stadium to see Frank Torre play first base for the Milwaukee Braves. Frank even gave him his ring from the ’58 loss. Joe wore it for several years in his early seasons with the Braves and St. Louis Cardinals, but stopped because people would ask him if it was his.

The ring was stolen from a New York hotel room in 1971, and Joe promised his brother that he would win one for Frankie Jr., Frank’s son, before his career was over. Joe Torre visited Frank at the hospital Monday and got the ring size. It is a promise about to be fulfilled, and maybe the long pursuit has made it that much more rewarding.

Torre didn’t join his players on the field as they celebrated Sunday’s victory over the Orioles and the pennant clinching.

He waited on the top step, choosing to watch, to photograph it in the camera of the mind. He then greeted each player with a hug and tears before hustling to join his family in the manager’s office and to call Frank.

“I never thought this day would ever come,” Torre said, having chased the elusive Series for 32 years as player and manager, 18 as a first baseman, catcher and third baseman for the Braves, Cardinals and Mets, teams he would later manager.

His playing career yielded a National League most-valuable-player award in 1971 but he said, “I was always willing to trade it for a World Series. The only thing that matters is what the team does.”

Torre got within a game of the World Series with St. Louis in 1973 and ’74 after thinking it was a given when traded there from Atlanta in 1969 because St. Louis had won in ’68. But ‘69, as he said, was the year of the “magical Mets.”

In three seasons as Atlanta’s manager, Torre finished second twice and won the National League West in 1982--”I didn’t feel that close to the World Series because we really weren’t that good,” he said--but was fired anyway.

He managed a dreadful Mets team for almost five years, starting in 1977, a span that bridged two of that organization’s most successful periods, and then gave up the security of five years in the Angels’ TV booth to return to St. Louis as manager in August 1990.

Unfortunately for Torre, in the wake of a successful era under Whitey Herzog, the brewery ownership grew dissatisfied with escalating salaries, lost interest in baseball and failed to provide Torre with the players he needed. He was fired by the Cardinals on June 16 of last year.

So now he is headed to a World Series rendezvous against a team that fired him, be it Atlanta or St. Louis.

“It’s never been a case of seeking vindication, only getting to the World Series,” he said.

Nevertheless, he conceded, St. Louis would be special because he has always considered it a second home and “my six years as a player there were the greatest of my career.”

New ownership, he added, brought in a new philosophy and new players. The ’96 team is far different from the team that was 20-27 when he was fired, although current General Manager Walt Jocketty, in his first year in ‘95, didn’t wait long to pull the trigger. He has said since that it was an ownership decision he didn’t want to make. However, the public explanation at the time still rankles Torre.

“All they needed to say was that they wanted to make a change,” he said. “That’s what Ted Turner did in Atlanta. Don’t BS it. They didn’t have to say they were doing it because we hadn’t played well lately. That ticked me off. That was an insult to me.”

Although his wife advised him against giving up the dream, Torre thought his managerial opportunities were done. He had managed the three teams he had played for and figured he had used up his connections.

He hired an agent to pursue broadcasting opportunities, but then the winter turned interesting.

The Yankees called. Arthur Richman, an advisor to owner George Steinbrenner, recommended Torre, a longtime friend. Torre was offered the position of general manager but rejected it.

Bob Watson, who had played for Torre in Atlanta, moved from Houston to accept the general manager’s hot seat and recommended Torre as manager to replace Buck Showalter.

Steinbrenner didn’t know Torre but offered a two-year contract, figuring that Torre, a New Yorker, had the mental toughness to handle the Bronx.

The owner then went out and reportedly tried to hire Showalter back.

“Should I rent or buy?” Torre asked.

“Rent,” Steinbrenner said.

A bemused Torre said, “I’d already been fired three times. I wasn’t exactly a novice. What more could happen to me? I mean, the owner might drive me nuts, but the chance to reach the World Series offset that. I went to spring training thinking this was the first legitimate chance I had to win. I looked on the opportunity to manage here as a bonus.”

Has the owner driven him nuts?

“Not at all,” Torre said. “He hasn’t once told me who to play or given me a lineup. My attitude is that he’s the boss and has the prerogative to be around or to sit on the couch in my office, as long as he doesn’t interfere in the job he hired me to do.

“That’s not to say there haven’t been disagreements behind closed doors [Watson and Torre, for example, wanted to pursue Chuck Finley of the Angels as a response to the Orioles’ getting David Wells, but Steinbrenner chose to give $20 million to Kenny Rogers], but those disagreements have basically remained behind closed doors. I mean, there’s nothing been said publicly [by Steinbrenner] that I felt needed a response, and that’s not my style anyway. I don’t have to show people who the boss is.”

When it comes to the Yankees, that’s not even a question.

Steinbrenner announced several weeks ago that Torre would be back for the second year on his contract. The owner now calls the Yankee pennant vindication for the sniping he took on all the big-money player decisions of last winter, but he didn’t dwell on that, turning a conversation to Torre and saying:

“He’s done a great job. His mental toughness has rubbed off on this team. I couldn’t be prouder. If anybody beats us, they will have to say they beat the toughest team they’ve ever played.

“To have the Yankees back in the World Series at this time is the greatest thing that could happen for baseball and this city.”

Torre preached World Series from the start of spring training, believing he had the pitching and talent to get there.

His calm demeanor has been a sharp and welcome contrast to the control-oriented Showalter and the histrionics of the Bronx.

Said catcher Jim Leyritz: “I’ve been here six years and never seen the clubhouse run this smoothly. Joe never wavered. He kept everything intact.”

Added relief pitcher John Wetteland: “Joe is very into preparation and execution and has a calm way of imparting those things. It reaps a great deal of respect from the players. It’s tremendous that his attitude and the way he goes about his job brings such a melding of all our players. Our chemistry has been tremendous. I mean, nobody cares who gets it done on a certain day, just that it gets done.”

Torre considers his club a throwback, a team-oriented rarity in an era when players tend to put statistics and self first.

Outstanding players are not supposed to make good managers because they can’t relate to the difficult task facing players with less talent, but Torre said, “I hit .363 and I hit .247 and I tried just as hard both years. Sometimes someone is better than you, but give me the effort.

“I have no patience for mental mistakes and a lack of preparation. Don’t get caught up in anything except trying to win.”

Aggressive and versatile in his strategical approach, Torre said, “You manage according to your personnel.”

He has benefited from Steinbrenner’s allowing him to bring in his own coaches. And key to that was luring Don Zimmer out of retirement to work with him on the bench.

“I don’t feel my approach has changed much from when I started managing, except that you grow through experience,” Torre said.

“I’m better now at identifying what a player can and can’t do. I also think it’s tougher to play and manage now because of the money. You can’t just ask them to do something, you have to have a reason.

“Years ago, a player was a player. Now they’re celebrities. How a player does is equated to his salary. If they do well, they’re supposed to. If they don’t, they stink.”

Part manager, part counselor.

And today’s Yankees know they won’t read something in the paper before hearing it from Torre.

“You take a Wade Boggs or Paul O’Neill out of the lineup [as he did in the league championship series], you talk to them first,” Torre said. “They’re more than names on a lineup card. If that makes me too easy and too nice, as some people have said, that’s me.”

Relaxed and calm as he is, the players know that he’s watching. Darryl Strawberry, replacing O’Neill, was an unspectacular one for four in Game 3 against the Orioles, but Torre talked about seeing life in Strawberry’s hands and started him again in Game 4, replacing Tim Raines. Strawberry hit two home runs, then hit another in the Game 5 clincher.

On a West Coast trip in late August, as the Yankees’ lead over the Orioles in the East was dwindling from 12 games to two, Torre called center fielder Bernie Williams into his office for a private meeting.

“I told him I didn’t like the way he was playing the outfield,” he said. “It wasn’t that he was loafing, it was more his body language. I wasn’t seeing the life I’d seen him have. He understood.”

Williams became a leader, playing with fire, his body language visible in the pumping of a fist, his vocal exhortations.

He led the Yankees down the stretch and hasn’t stopped, playing brilliantly in the playoffs, MVP of the league championship series, helping Joe Torre reach the World Series in this, the best fall of his worst year.

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Joe Torre at a Glance

AS A PLAYER

*--*

Yrs G R H 2B HR RBI AVG 18 2,209 996 2,342 344 252 1,185 .297

*--*

National League MVP in 1971.

Led NL in average (.363) and RBIs (137) in 1971.

Won gold glove as catcher in 1965.

Nine-time all-star.

Caught Warren Spahn’s 300th victory.

Finished second in 1961 rookie-of-the-year voting behind Billy Williams.

Has Atlanta record for homers in a season by a catcher (36)

AS A MANAGER

*--*

Yrs Team W L Pct 1977-81 New York Mets 286 420 .405 1982-84 Atlanta 257 229 .529 1990-95 St. Louis 351 354 .498 1996 New York Yankees 92 70 .568 Totals 986 1,073 .479

*--*

* NL manager of year in 1982.

* First to win MVP and manager of the year.

* Fourth person to manage Mets and Yankees (Yogi Berra, Dallas Green, Casey Stengel).

* Won NL West title with Atlanta in 1982.