Torre Knew the Right Decision Was To Walk Away

After the Yankees lost the 1960 World Series in bizarre and dramatic fashion, the team scheduled a press conference at the Savoy Hilton in New York, and let it leak that then-70-year-old manager Casey Stengel — who had guided the team to ten pennants and seven championships in 12 seasons — had resigned due to his age.

At the event, reporters shouted down Yankees co-owner Dan Topping, who was attempting to give Stengel the verbal equivalent of a gold watch. The writers were trying to get the Old Professor himself to give them the real story. "Were you fired?" they shouted. "Resigned, fired, quit, discharged, use whatever you damn please," he said. "I don't care. You don't see me crying about it."

The event continued, with the reporters pressing the question: "Were you fired?" Stengel, who had been holding back his anger the entire time, finally burst like a dam. "Goddamned right I've been fired!" he shouted.

The press and public buried the Yankees. It wasn't that they denied the reality of Stengel's age, which had really affected him, but that the Yankees had dismissed someone who had meant so much to the franchise so cavalierly. Said Topping, "Twelve years ago, we were ridiculed when Casey came to us. Now we're being ridiculed as he's leaving us."

Forty-seven years later, we have arrived at the sequel to Stengel's "resignation," the moment where the man once derided as Clueless Joe is clumsily sent packing by a clueless Yankees ownership and executives. Their ineptitude is not in failing to retain Torre; there were reasonable arguments both for and against bringing the longtime skipper back for an encore. That's not what is at issue today. Rather, it is the graceless way in which the Yankees tried to release Torre with a deal that he had to refuse if he was to retain his own dignity.

Dignity is an alien concept in the world of the Yankees. Off-the-field employees have always been little more than a commodity, to be used and disposed of. More prominent members were rarely fired, but more often transformed into a kind of zombie. At times, Yankee Stadium must have resembled a hybrid baseball-horror movie: Night of the Living Dead General Manager. George Steinbrenner always had a way of keeping former employees dangling on his string, rarely firing anyone outright, but instead transforming them into "consultants" paid to exchange spotlight baseball jobs for a permanent spot in the twilight zone. You can argue that ex-managers such as Billy Martin and Bob Lemon, and even deposed general managers such as Stick Michael, won out in the end, making money just to be on the other end of the phone if and when the Big Man called.

But that exchange has its costs. You're not unemployed — but you're not exactly working anywhere. If you're someone such as Martin, with a perpetually distressed personal life and an emotional need to be associated with the Yankees, it meant spending a good chunk of your life waiting for the owner to dangle the pinstriped pajamas with the no. 1 on the back. Martin was in and out of that suit five times officially, and probably many times more unofficially.

While Torre has yet to disclose his exact reasons for turning down the Yankees' offer (that will come later today), it is clear that, unlike Martin, he is not a masochist. Like his predecessor, Martin, Torre clearly enjoyed being the manager of the Yankees. The job brought him the wealth, fame, and respect that managing the Mets, Braves, and Cardinals did not. Yet asked to crawl to retain his position, he gave the Yankees — or whatever portion of the clearly fractious leadership group that was trying to stick it to him with a large pay cut and demeaning incentives meant to "motivate" him, as team president Randy Levine put it — a resounding no.

The team was pressed by Torre's many fans both inside and outside of the organization, and by some players who are about to enter the free agent market: In light of that pressure, the Yankees tried to have it both ways in presenting the illusion of a legitimate offer. They can now say — if Mariano Rivera or Jorge Posada or Mr. Season Ticket Holder looks askance — "Hey, he always could have taken us up on the deal." It remains to be seen if anyone will buy the argument. Even if they don't, it may not matter: Yankees' money talks louder than loyalty. You don't see Brian Cashman resigning over the way Torre has been treated. Chances are, the stars go to the highest bidder — which is, inevitably the Yankee organization.

Love or hate Torre, he was one of the most successful managers in team history, and he exits with typical class. In late 1996, after the "Clueless Joe" headline had proved to be a misfire on the level of "Dewey Defeats Truman," those that composed it explained that they didn't mean Torre was clueless in the sense of being a stupid man or a bad manager. What they said they meant was that this nice man was clueless about the kind of abuse he had just signed on for, about the character of the people he was getting in bed with.

Maybe they were right. Maybe Torre only found out whom he was dealing with today. But Torre wasn't clueless in the end. He knew the right thing to do was to walk away.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of "Forging Genius," a biography of Casey Stengel.