Saturday, October 20, 2007
The End of the Torre Dynasty
Even an occasional reader of this space knows that I am a second-generation, bleeding-orange-and-blue, once-dressed-up-like-Lenny-Dykstra-for-Halloween New York Mets fan. And for any Mets fan, or Yankee-basher, the events that transpired in Tampa, FL on Thursday felt like Christmas morning, Thanksgiving dinner, and the release of the iPhone all rolled into one fateful and glorious moment.
Joe Torre's decision to break free of his ever-tarnishing cage in the Bronx Zoo officially signals the end of an era for this franchise. That's the biggest headline, the most obvious conclusion. It's symbolic of a larger issue, which is that the New York Yankees haven't felt like winners since Aaron Boone went yard in the bottom of the 11th to end the 2003 ALCS. During the glut of Torre's run, the Yankees were the team to beat; for the last several years, they were the team to be beaten: by the Red Sox, the Marlins, the Diamondbacks, the Angels, and now by the Indians and their supernatural insect army.
The team and its fans no longer spend their time counting diamonds on championship rings. The New Math in the Bronx is tabulating Alex Rodriguez's postseason batting average, the amount of money Roger Clemens is earning by the pitch, and how many arms the Yankees needed to have on the roster just to make the postseason. (1999 starting rotation: Orlando Hernandez, David Cone, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens and Hideki Irabu; the 2007 Yankees had 14 different pitchers start a game, with Pettitte and Clemens still around eight years later.)
How ironic that all the talk in the last 24 hours has been about money the Yankees didn't spend, in this case to keep Torre from leaving. But I don't believe the money or the years were the determining factor.
I'm not going to pretend that I know Torre or have talked to Torre or have some psychological insight into his thought process, but I do know he has two functioning optic nerves and therefore can read the writing on the wall. This group is in decline as a championship team, and Torre knows it. Mariano Rivera is human, A-Rod (should he return) is a regular season beast and a postseason nothing, and the unbelievable quality depth that the Yankees used as a trademark during their dynasty has been diluted to the point where a guy named Wilson Betemit played in over 35 games. Track this Yankees team at first base from Tino Martinez to Jason Giambi to Doug Mientkiewicz; detect a trend there?
Torre is moving on at the right time, because nothing he does on the bench is going to reverse that trend. If he didn't leave now, he was going to be fired. And that's an indignity neither the Yankees nor their manager needed to suffer through, so this is a way to make Steinbrenner continue to look like a jerk, Torre to look like a victim, and the whole situation to move forward into an unpredictable next phase.
Okay, allow me to attempt to predict it: the Yankees will name either Don Mattingly or Joe Girardi as the new manager. Rivera will be back; Jorge Posada won't. The Yankees will win well over 90 games and make the postseason, and then do nothing. This might happen a few times over the next few seasons, if Brian Cashman opens the team's vault for a few small market superstars and if the pitching staff doesn't have the consistency of apple sauce.
But then the bottom will fall out, Jeter will become Mattingly circa 1987 (a Yankees legend on a playoff also-ran) and the Yankees will finally enter into the kind of karmic down-swing Red Sox fans have been praying for every Sunday since ... oh, let's say 1949.
Torre? Maybe he goes to the Los Angeles Dodgers, as the New York Post speculated today. As a Mets fan, I'd gladly rename my new stadium Joe Torre Park at Joe Torre Yards if he could whip my guys into shape for at least one World Series trophy. But that's probably a pipe dream.
But if this is it for Torre, let's call him what he is: an icon. An absolute baseball legend in New York, as much a face on the Mount Rushmore of Big Apple sports as Babe Ruth or Micky Mantle or Joe Namath or Isiah Thomas. (Okay, scratch that last one.)
What I'll remember most ... long before Bill Belichick perfected the look, Torre had the wonderful, confident scowl that acted almost like a poker face; something that said, "You might think you're in this game with my boys now, but you have no idea what kind of shock and awe is going to land on your lap in an inning or two." It was a classic baseball look, and one that will be missed in the Yankees dugout.
Four World Series titles, 1,173 victories and 12-for-12 in playoff appearances — there's no questioning that, under Torre's leadership, this was a dynasty.
Yet from Ming to Joan Collins, if there's one thing we've learned about dynasties, it's that they eventually fall.
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].