Torre has Dodgers’ respect

VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Nearly two weeks into his first camp with the Dodgers, Joe Torre said he is sensing that players are starting to get comfortable with him. When he walks into the clubhouse these days, he said, players no longer stop their conversations.

Asked whether that was true, pitcher Brad Penny said he wasn’t so sure.

“I think I might’ve noticed that one time,” Penny said Monday. “It’s out of respect.”

Penny said he has had a few conversations with Torre and described the new manager as being very approachable. But Penny confessed, “Honestly, I don’t know him real well.”

The same is true of catcher Russell Martin, who said he and Torre are in the “beginning of the process” of getting to know each other.

Torre has done little instructing so far, leaving his coaches to coach while floating from practice field to practice field, as is the custom with most managers at this time of year. With 62 players in camp, one-on-one interaction with players has been fairly limited.

Serious conversations with individual players, Torre said, can wait until the team moves its camp to Arizona next month, by which time cuts will have reduced the population density of the clubhouse. But he insisted that those talks will happen, noting that the players of today aren’t as obedient as players of the past and require explanations as to why they’re being used the way they’re used.

Among Torre’s future conversations will be one with Martin about reducing the number of games he plays so that he can be fresh in September. That Martin appeared to not want to listen to what Torre had to say on the subject in a recent conversation didn’t seem to bother Torre. The manager went so far as to imitate the All-Star catcher’s reaction, raising his eyebrows, sighing, looking down and muttering, “What do I tell this guy?”

“He wasn’t disrespectful in any way,” Torre said, shrugging. “We’ll talk about it, we will.”

Opportunities to meet the man behind the myth have been limited mostly to the team’s morning meetings, after which, left fielder Juan Pierre said, he often doesn’t see Torre for the rest of the day. But the glimpse the players have had of Torre, several of them said, matches what they anticipated.

“He’s a guy who’s in control,” Martin said. “He’s aware of everything that’s going on around him.”

The Torre who has stood in the clubhouse talking about his playing and managerial experience is the same man whom Pierre said he saw on television managing the New York Yankees when “you couldn’t tell if they were up by 10 or down by 10.”

Pierre said that Torre and predecessor Grady Little are similar in that “they’re not rah-rah kind of guys.” But the similarities stop there.

Torre likes to joke, Pierre said, “but he tells kind of subtle jokes. Grady was more like a good old country boy. Not saying one’s better than the other. It’s just different.”

As was the experience they brought to the club when hired.

Torre’s baseball past -- he was a National League most valuable player as a third baseman with the St. Louis Cardinals and won four World Series titles as Yankees manager -- has given him instant credibility in the clubhouse.

“Those things reassure us because we know we’re playing for someone who knows what we’re going through,” reliever Yhency Brazoban said.

Already, the atmosphere in the clubhouse is different.

“It was a lot looser last year,” reliever Rudy Seanez said. “I don’t want to say it’s strict now because it’s not. But the vibe is, ‘Come in, take it seriously, get your work done, do it right, be on time.’ ”

Reliever Scott Proctor, who played under Torre with the Yankees, and second baseman Jeff Kent, who has the same agent as Torre, said that the change in managers would result in greater accountability for the players.

“He has a line and you don’t cross it,” Proctor said. “Other guys, they might let certain guys get away with certain things every now and then. Joe’s dealt with guys in New York who are franchise players and they knew you didn’t pass go.”

Those new to Torre seem to have picked up on that as well, perhaps because of the presence of third base coach Larry Bowa, who comes with a reputation as being as fiery as Torre is calm.

“Everybody knows what Bowa’s capable of,” Pierre said.

Penny said he welcomed that.

“Last year, you made a mistake, you get a pat on the butt,” Penny said. “It won’t be that way this year.”

But Torre has said he wants his players to be “intense without being tense,” which is why he didn’t hesitate to approve the idea brought to him by Nomar Garciaparra about holding a “Dodger Idol” competition behind closed clubhouse doors Wednesday and Thursday. Players and staff in their first major league camps will be forced to sing in front of the rest of the team.

And when Torre approached reliever Joe Beimel last week about cutting his shoulder-length hair, he asked whether Beimel wouldn’t mind doing so rather than issuing an order.

“I don’t want to change anybody’s personality,” Torre said. “To me, individuals are very important. Sure, we want to think as a team, but individuals are what it’s all about.

“I’m not comfortable if players have a hesitation, either. It’s not, ‘I’ve been doing this a long time, so you have to come around to my way of thinking.’ No, I think it’s something where you have to meet in the middle all the time.

“It’s certainly incumbent upon me to open up the communication lines.”

--

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com