Biting The Pinstriped Hands That Fed Him

It was with some irritation that I read of former Yankee manager Joe Torre's scathing remarks about the front office and players of the team that he led from 1996 through 2007 in an upcoming book.

To be fair, the reports highlight only parts of the book, so I'll reserve final judgment. But my initial reaction definitely isn't positive. I've always considered Joe Torre a good manager, but not a great one. He deserves some credit for the four World Series championships that were won under his watch, but let's be fair when we note that he wasn't exactly tasked with making chicken salad out of chicken feathers. The Yankees have had the highest payroll in the league since 1994, and Torre was able to roll out stellar starting pitching in most of those championship years. Number of World Series won since 2000 under Torre's watch? Zero. If you assess his leadership using a metric of wins per dollar, his record suddenly becomes a little less stellar.

But my point isn't to denegrate Joe Torre's managing record as opposed to his bitterness. Being consistently the highest paid manager in the league (by a large amount), there are going to be high expectations upon you. The bottom line is that in the second half of his tenure as Yankee manager, he didn't deliver, so he was given a pay cut. Brian Cashman, who Torre skewers in the book, is and will be held under the same standard and will be assessed accordingly. Torre doesn't seem to grasp this. The article states:

His Dodgers deal came two weeks after having walked away from the Yankees when they offered a one-year contract worth $5 million plus $3 million in performance incentives he termed "an insult.''

"I don't think incentives are necessary," he said then. "I've been here a long time and I've never needed to be motivated. Plus, in my [previous] contract, I get a million-dollar bonus if we do win the World Series, so that's always been there."

If we're going to skewer former basketball player Latrell Sprewell for his rejecting an apparently meager 3-year / $21 million contract, noting that "I've got a family to feed", doesn't Joe Torre deserve that same treatment for deeming a guaranteed $5 million contract with an upside to $8 million as being "an insult"? And his point of view of incentive compensation is completely misguided. The rationale of incentive compensation isn't a question of whether one is motivated or not, it's to provide greater alignment between "results" and "pay". The team does well, and Joe gets very rich. The team doesn't do well, and Joe gets a little less rich to the tune of $5 million.

I don't doubt for a second that Torre went through a tough time as a Yankee employee, but the premium has already been paid. Much in the same way that investment bankers are paid vasts amount of money in lieu of having a work/life balance, Yankee employees are paid handsomely for the "win or out" workplace culture. To burn the bridges behind him by writing a book skewering many of the hands that paid him and won him games comes off as petulant and petty. Two sports columns in the NY Post agree: "REVOLTIN' JOE'S WHINE TURNS BITTER" says one; "YOU'VE MANAGED TO RUIN A LEGACY" says the other.

And that State Farm commercial where Torre talks about loving his new life surfing, writing screenplays, riding in a convertible while drinking wheatgrass and saying "I am so there"? It just seems like his oversized ego got too big even for New York, which he apparently isn't missing so much. I'd bet a lot of Yankee fans today are saying "Good riddance."