The Yankee Years
by RussYeah…. I wouldn’t buy it. You’re right – we lived it. I don’t know maybe I’m going soft in my old age, but when I look back I think Torre’s departure was fine. Consider this:
Mike is right. Torre was on borrowed time. If many of you recall, after the Detroit playoff loss, I wrote a post advocating that it was time for Torre to go and for Sweet Lou to be in.Â
So – I agree with the decision to let Torre go. I also respected Torre’s decision to get on a plane and go to Tampa to talk with the Steinbrenner family. After all, George gave Torre the opportunity of a lifetime to manage the Yankees.  Torre went, didn’t like what he heard and he was out. I don’t see anything wrong with any of this. He’s not entitled to manage the Yankees, the Steinbrenners are free to offer whatever they want (or offer nothing at all) and no one was forcing Joe to accept it. Done.Â
There will always be some Yankee fans that will buy into the “Joe as the injured party” version of the story. I think it was fine. Sooner or later – Joe should come back – eventually. Yogi came back (and he was treated much worse), Joe can come back too.
1 comment January 27 2009 10:24 am | Russ | Discussion |
I partly agree. I agree that the Yanks can hire whomever they want to manage the club. That’s their right.
BUT…if they didn’t want Joe to come back…have the guts to say that…instead of extending some bogus offer they knew he wouldn’t accept and then not budging even a little bit. Yes, $5 Million is a lot of cash….BUT THEY KNEW HE WASN’T GOING TO TAKE ONE YEAR!!!
So, they took the sleazy way of getting rid of Joe.
They should have said, “Joe, Thank you for 12 great years. You’ve been more than we could have asked for. It was a great run. But, we are going in a different direction.”