The Yankee Years Part 27

Torre was putting his faith in the power of personal communication, antic.i.p.ating that a face-to-face meeting with the lieutenants would bring about an honest negotiation. He held out hope that there was a way to manage the Yankees in 2008 without his head in a noose from the first day of spring training. The first thing he needed to know was if they really wanted him in the first place.

"Do you want me to manage?"

Levine and Hal told him that yes, they wanted him back, and it was a unanimous decision by everyone in the room. Hal said they had decided on an offer: a one-year contract at $5 million, a 33 percent pay cut from his 2007 salary. Hal told him, "I want you to manage because you're good with young players." Torre wondered why, if that were the case, they were offering only one year.

If the Yankees reached the postseason, Torre would get another $1 million. He would get another $1 million if the Yankees reached the League Championship Series and another $1 million if they reached the World Series. Levine cla.s.sified the bonus money as "incentives," implying at the meeting and later to reporters that Torre needed to be motivated. "It's important to motivate people," Levine would later tell reporters, "as most people in everyday life have to be, based on performance."

Motivate? The 2007 Yankees had come back from the sixth-worst 50-game start in franchise history to make the playoffs. They had used 14 different starting pitchers-no Yankees team except the wartime 1946 team ever needed more-and yet they still won 94 games. They roared back from a losing record as late as July 7 to play .675 baseball down the stretch (52-25). Three-fifths of their original rotation was a disaster-Kei Igawa and Carl Pavano combined for three wins, and Mike Mussina endured the worst season of his career-and yet they won the third-most games in all of baseball.

Did Torre help accomplish all of that and then suddenly lose his motivation during, of all times, the playoffs? Or did the Yankees' exit have something to do with their ace throwing two of the worst games in postseason history and a freakish attack of Lake Erie midges?

Torre would later tell reporters he considered the incentives "an insult." In doing so, he was not referring to the idea of incentives or the money itself, but rather to the thinking of the Yankees executives that he needed such a carrot to be "motivated."

"I don't need motivation to do what I do," he told the Yankees executives at the meeting. "You have to understand that."

Said Torre, "I've always had a $1 million bonus for winning the World Series. In fact, in my last contract, when we put it together, Steve Swindal and myself, we had different stages, if you win-win-win. That's the way it was when I took over initially, even in my first year, that you got so much for getting to different levels. I said then, 'Let's admit it: the only thing that's worthwhile is the World Series. The only bonus I want you to put in there is the World Series.' "

_As much as Torre was bothered by the idea that he needed incentives to be motivated, what really stopped him was the term of the contract. Sure, maybe the seven executives in the room did want him back, but they wanted him back only in the exact compromised position in which he had managed the 2007 season: with a noose around his neck and a trapdoor below his feet. They wanted him to manage the Yankees only from an exposed position.

There was no way Torre was coming back under those conditions again, not when he knew it meant being put in the cross-hairs of being fired and undermined from Day One. The seven executives, meanwhile, would consider no other arrangement but that one.

"Going back to the first question I asked-'Do you want me to manage?'-the answer they gave me really wasn't honest," Torre said. "They said they wanted me to manage. If they wanted me to manage, we would have found a way to get it done. And that was never the case. Because there was never any movement. Negotiation is something that takes place between two sides. That didn't happen. It was, 'Either take it or leave it.' And my feeling was that only because I was here so long that they felt they were obligated to make an offer."

Torre calmly tried to make a case for himself. For instance, he pointed out that over the course of his tenure attendance at Yankee Stadium had skyrocketed 90 percent. The Yankees ranked in the middle of the pack in attendance in Torre's first year, in 1996-seventh of 14 teams, with 2.2 million fans. In 2007 the Yankees ranked first with 4.2 million fans. He talked about ad revenues he brought to the Yankees himself, from companies that wanted to be a.s.sociated with one of the most successful managers in modern history. Under Torre, of course, the Yankees were a postseason guarantee: a perfect 12-for-12 in postseason appearances with pennants in half of those years and world championships in a third of them. The promise of October baseball helped drive season ticket sales and offered another month of revenues when most ballparks were dark. And even when Torre's teams did not win the World Series in the seven-year "drought," the Yankees were far and away the best team in baseball. In that 20012007 "drought," the Yankees were at least 37 wins better than every other team in baseball.

None of it meant anything to the seven other people in the room, not, anyway, in terms of even considering a second year.

"The reason I went there to Tampa," Torre said, "is I wanted to see somebody face-to-face, and I wanted to see if any of these points I brought up made any sense. I mean, where the attendance was when I first got there and where it was now, the revenues they've made since then . . . maybe all this stuff would somehow negate some of the fact that they felt I was overpaid and overstayed. Overpaid and overstayed. And then n.o.body had the guts to just say, 'Get out.' That was the worst part."

There would be no negotiations. When Cashman was asked later by reporters why the Yankees refused to negotiate, he said, "It's just complicated, given the dollars."

But dollars had nothing to do with it. Torre would even tell reporters later that the $5 million salary was "generous." He wasn't asking to negotiate dollars. He was asking to negotiate one year of some security and peace. The Yankees would have none of it, and when the seven executives made it clear to him that theirs was a take-it-or-leave-it offer, Torre understood the greatest pillar of his management style had been destroyed: the trust was gone. He knew his employers did not trust him. For a man who made trust the single most important ingredient of championship teams-trust among teammates, trust from those players in the honesty and integrity of the manager and staff-he could not continue without it. It became an easy decision: he told the seven executives he could not accept their offer.

"Yeah, I was leaving a lot of money on the table," Torre said, "but I didn't give a s.h.i.t because I knew what I went through the year before, sitting behind that desk every day and dreading coming to the ballpark. It would have been the same thing.

"I mean, if I could go right from my house to the dugout, it would have been wonderful. But that other s.h.i.t I had to put up with, I didn't want any more of that, and there was no price tag I could put on that. I couldn't do it for all the money in the world for one year like that. And really, I only wanted to manage one more year, but I wanted to manage that one year in peace."

So that was it. The 12-year Torre Era had come to a nonnegotiable end. Torre's run as manager of the New York Yankees ended with a meeting that took little more than 10 minutes. As Torre got up from his seat in Steinbrenner's office, Hal Steinbrenner said to him, "The door's always open. You can always work for the YES network!"

Torre was too stunned to speak, caught between bemus.e.m.e.nt and anger. Did The Boss's son really just dangle the consolation of working for the Yankees-run regional television network after the Yankees refused to negotiate with the second-winningest manager in franchise history? Wow, Torre thought. They really don't get it.

Torre shook the hands of everybody in the room, starting with George. The old man took his dark gla.s.ses off and said, "Good luck, Joe."

"Thanks again, Boss," Torre said.

Felix was the only one who walked out of the room with Torre toward the elevators in the reception area of the third-floor offices. But then Cashman appeared.

"Joe, Lonn and I won't be flying back with you," Cashman said. "We'll be staying here."

Seeing Cashman suddenly reminded Torre of something: that two-year proposal he made to Cashman over the phone in advance of the meeting, the one with the buyout in it. The offer never had been discussed in Steinbrenner's office. Torre figured Cashman already had presented it to the other executives, and he was curious as to what happened to the proposal.

"Cash," Torre said, "they had no interest in that buyout proposal, the one I gave you over the phone?"

Cashman looked at Torre oddly, as if this was something new.

"Uh, I really didn't understand it," Cashman said. "Remind me, what was it again?"

"Two-year contract, whatever the number. If they fire me during the first year, they pay me both years. If they fire me after the first year, they pay me some reduced amount we can talk about."

"I'll see."

Cashman walked back into Steinbrenner's office.

Torre was incredulous.

"I'm thinking, Well, s.h.i.t! He never told them!" Torre said.

They had spent 12 years together, Cashman first as the a.s.sistant to general manager Bob Watson and then as the general manager of three consecutive world championship teams with Torre as the manager. Torre had presented Cashman with the lineup card from the clinching game of the 1998 World Series, the one in which those Yankees established themselves as one of the greatest teams of all time with a record 125 wins, postseason included. Torre and Cashman had shared dinners and champagne and laughs and arguments. Twelve years. It was an eternity in baseball for an executive and a manager to work together for that long.

But at the moment when Torre was searching for some way to save his job, and when he turned to Cashman in his moment of need, Cashman did not so much as pa.s.s on to his bosses a proposal from Torre-a simple one, too, one that was not at all difficult to understand. Twelve years together, and it ends like this.

Come to think of it, Torre thought, Cashman had said nothing nothing during the entire meeting. Cashman was the general manager who had convinced Steinbrenner after the 2005 season to put in writing that he would have control over all baseball operations. The manager is a fairly important part of baseball operations. And when the future employment of the manager was being discussed, how was it that the empowered general manager had nothing at all to say? during the entire meeting. Cashman was the general manager who had convinced Steinbrenner after the 2005 season to put in writing that he would have control over all baseball operations. The manager is a fairly important part of baseball operations. And when the future employment of the manager was being discussed, how was it that the empowered general manager had nothing at all to say?

"Cash was sitting right over my right shoulder," Torre said, "and never uttered a sound the whole meeting." Cashman, for his part, said simply, "It was Joe's meeting."

Only much later did Torre start to put the picture together of what had happened to his working relationship with Cashman. The personal fallout they had in 2006 spring training, Cashman's conversion to the religion of statistics, his disregard for bringing back Bernie Williams, his submission of odd lineup suggestions based on stats, his lack of regard for Ron Guidry as a pitching coach, his detachment from the responsibility "they" were making on an offer to Torre, his failure to offer any comment or support in the meeting to decide Torre's future, his failure to personally relay to the Steinbrenners Torre's proposal to find a way to reach an agreement . . .

Where could Torre find support in the end? Steve Swindal, thanks to one DUI charge, had been run out of the organization and the Steinbrenner family. George Steinbrenner was not fit enough to deal directly with Torre himself. And now Cashman had retreated to silence with Torre's job on the line. The allies of Joe Torre had dwindled to zero.

"I thought Cash was an ally, I really did," Torre said. "You know, we had some differences on coaches, and the usefulness of the coaches. I know he didn't think much of Guidry. And Zimmer. You know, Zimmer could not trust Cash, and I disagreed with Zimmer vehemently for the longest time. Then, you know, you start thinking about things . . . I have a-I don't want to say it's a weakness, but I like to believe that I want to trust people. And I do trust people until I'm proven wrong. And it's not going to keep me from trusting somebody else tomorrow because it's the only way I can do my job-is to be that guy."

Torre still held out faint hope that the two-year proposal could be the pathway to an agreement. He waited by the elevators.

"It was a last-ditch effort by me to remind them, 'Does this make any sense for us to get together?' " Torre said. "There weren't any cross words. I didn't say things to them in anger or anything. It was more like, 'If that's the way you want it, that's the way it is.' It was just trying to move a little bit and give them an offer that maybe they could live with. I just wanted to make sure before I did walk away from this thing that I gave them every opportunity to keep me."

Not more than 30 seconds after Cashman left Torre at the reception area, Cashman came walking back to him. It took less than a minute for the Steinbrenners, Levine and Trost to wholly reject the idea.

"No, they have no interest in doing that," Cashman told Torre.

No interest. Rejected in less than a minute. That was it. It was done. The Torre Era officially was finished. He stepped into the elevator and pushed the b.u.t.ton for the ground floor. A strong feeling washed over him.

"Relief," Torre said. "A feeling of relief." The relief came from knowing it was a very easy decision. He flew back home alone.

Acknowledgments.

Joe Torre My heartfelt grat.i.tude to George Steinbrenner for giving me the opportunity to accomplish something very special with his Yankees.

Arthur Richmond for suggesting to The Boss that he hire me.

A family of loving all-stars: my son, Michael, and his family; my daughters, Cristina and Lauren; my late brother, Rocco, and his dear wife, Rose; my mentor, brother Frank; my sisters, Rae and Sister Marguerite; my grandchildren, Kendra, Dylan, Talisa and Reed; all my nieces and nephews; my really cool late father-in-law, Big Ed Wolterman; and my equally cool mother-in-law, Lucille; plus Ali's 15 siblings and their children.

Joe Ponte, my best man and dear friend.

Katie, my very special sister-in-law.

C2 Matt Borzello, my childhood buddy, for being there, and here, and there, and here . . .

Joe Platania and Arthur Sando, my devoted friends, who are the Oscar and Felix of my life.

Billy Crystal, the former Yankee, for his enduring friendship.

Don Zimmer and Mel Stottlemyre, for being the greatest book-ends any manager could ever have. I wouldn't have been able to do it without them.

Drs. Bill Catalona and Howard Scher, for getting me through some tough times.

Dal Maxvill, for getting me back in the game.

Chris Romanello, my a.s.sistant, for trying to keep me organized.

Maury Gostfrand, for continuing to be my go-to guy.

John Wooden, for teaching us all the principles of coaching.

George Kissell, for teaching me more about baseball than anyone.

Sonny, a treasured family friend.

My players and staff members, without whom it would not have been possible.

The fans, both those who cursed and those who cheered.

And, for everyone I forgot, thanks for understanding.

Tom Verducci This book is many years and many opportunities in the making. The year of 1993, for instance, and the opportunity given me then by Mark Mulvoy of Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated are most definitely embedded in these pages. Everyone needs someone to believe in them, and Mark believed in me. He hired me in 1993 to work at are most definitely embedded in these pages. Everyone needs someone to believe in them, and Mark believed in me. He hired me in 1993 to work at Sports Ill.u.s.trated, Sports Ill.u.s.trated, which was and still is the most evolved form of sports writing to be found. Like a kid getting a roster spot on the 1998 Yankees, I learned and grew from being in the company of the very best, including all-stars such as Gary Smith, Jack McCallum, Rick Reilly and Richard Hoffer. Bill Colson, Mark's successor, was no less an important source of support for me. which was and still is the most evolved form of sports writing to be found. Like a kid getting a roster spot on the 1998 Yankees, I learned and grew from being in the company of the very best, including all-stars such as Gary Smith, Jack McCallum, Rick Reilly and Richard Hoffer. Bill Colson, Mark's successor, was no less an important source of support for me.

Education and the importance of teamwork never stop. I am fortunate enough today to work for a wise and kind man named Terry McDonell, who understood the rigors of this project and generously afforded me the breathing room to confront them. I am in debted to his graciousness. Likewise, Chris Stone at SI SI was and remains the writer's best friend: a trusted editor who respects the difficulty and the art of telling stories with words. This book would not be possible without his counsel and understanding. was and remains the writer's best friend: a trusted editor who respects the difficulty and the art of telling stories with words. This book would not be possible without his counsel and understanding.

Heartfelt thanks, too, must be sent to David Bauer, Mike Be-vans, Larry Burke, Paul Fichtenbaum, Rob Fleder, d.i.c.k Friedman, Damian Slattery, Melissa Segura and all the fine editors and reporters at SI SI whose influences are part of these pages. The reporting in this book often reflects and draws on my reporting and writing at whose influences are part of these pages. The reporting in this book often reflects and draws on my reporting and writing at SI SI in the years of the Torre Era. Steroids and the Yankees consumed many of my a.s.signments at the magazine in those years. Thanks, too, to Nate Gordon for not just putting up with me pestering him for photos while he was traveling the world, but also for coming through in the clutch. in the years of the Torre Era. Steroids and the Yankees consumed many of my a.s.signments at the magazine in those years. Thanks, too, to Nate Gordon for not just putting up with me pestering him for photos while he was traveling the world, but also for coming through in the clutch.

I must also express my extreme grat.i.tude for the existence of websites such as baseball-reference.com and retrosheet.org. Like cell phones, remote controls and t.i.tanium drivers, I don't know how we ever existed without them.

Special thanks go to the Yankee players themselves. The Yankees' clubhouse can be perceived as a tightly closed society, but when you begin to understand the Yankees as people and not just ballplayers, you start to understand who they are and catch glimpses of their soul. I was fortunate enough to see the kindness in almost all of them, though those who went above and beyond a baseline of cooperation deserve special mention, including David Cone, Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, Derek Jeter, Mike Mussina, Andy Pett.i.tte, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera.

Similarly, I have found the general managers, owners and executives of major league teams to be extraordinarily eager to discuss the sport we love, and special thanks from that group must be accorded to Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, Bud Selig and Mark Shapiro.

The people who are most responsible for bringing this book to life were the ones I knew were there for me every day. David Black, my literary agent, believed in me long before I believed in myself. Every writer should be so lucky as to have a confidante like David in his corner, and not just because he knows the most fabulous places to eat lunch in New York. Bill Thomas, my editor at Doubleday, kept a cool head and sharp wit while up against an unforgiving production schedule and cruel economic times for the publishing industry and beyond. His enthusiasm for the project, especially as the pages came in, meant the world to me.

Of course, extra special thanks to Joe Torre. He gave this project far more than his name. He gave it his sincere care and attention, and for that I am extremely grateful. Above all, I thank him, as you should, for his unblinking honesty. What may be the last dynasty in baseball, and one of the most eventful eras in baseball history, has been illuminated by the honesty of a man who saw it all up close. Best of all, he knows only one way to share it: by telling the truth. He neither ran from the truth nor attempted to so much as bend it.

Finally, and most of all, I am thankful for the love and support from my wife, Kirsten, and our sons, Adam and Ben. I am incomplete without them, and having to give this book the time and attention it required often left me missing them. Kirsten, Adam and Ben, I am forever grateful for your understanding, but most of all, for your love.

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When Torre was named Yankee manager on November 2, 1995, he was not a popular choice.

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Jim Leyritz's 8th-inning home run against Atlanta in Game 4 of the 1996 World Series was a pivotal moment in the Yankees' comeback from a 0-2 deficit in the series.

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The big hit in the clinching Game 6 was a triple by Yankees catcher Joe Girardi. It was the Yankees' first t.i.tle in 18 years.

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John Wetteland, the Yankees closer and World Series MVP in 1996. As good as Wetteland was, he was let go to make room for Mariano Rivera the following season.

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Bernie Williams was a force at the plate and a Gold Glovecaliber center fielder. Cla.s.sy and graceful, Williams won a batting t.i.tle and was one of the best clutch hitters in play-off history.

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Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez epitomized the intensity and selflessness that characterized the great Yankee teams and were adored by the fans.

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Scott Brosius was a terrific defensive third baseman, who played hard and handled the bat well.

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Andy Pett.i.te never was considered the ace of the staff, yet won 170 games in a Yankee uniform and pitched brilliantly in many big games.