(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
They both coached the Dodgers.
One in Brooklyn and the other in Los Angeles.
They both coached the Braves.
One in Atlanta and the other in Boston.
They both coached in New York. They both managed in Shea as well as Yankee Stadium.
Neither had any real success as managers until they came to the Bronx.
One managed the Yankees to five consecutive World Series championships while the other managed the Yankess to five pennants and four World Series championships in his first six years as skipper.
Neither of them had a winning season as manager of the New York Mets.
So what makes Charles Dillon Stengel and Joseph Paul Torre so special?
Both had the mutual admiration of the players as well as the collective confidence of the team that they could win.
Between Joe Torre and Casey Stengel, they've won 4,151 times while losing 3,757. They won 15 American League Pennants and 11 World Series championships. Stengel and Torre account for 42% of the Yankees World Series wins and 38% of all the Yankee Pennants!
That's how good they were when managing in the pinstripes.
While Torre won 100 games four times (1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004), Stengel reached the century mark just once in 1954 (103-51) only to finish second to Vic Wertz and the Cleveland Indians. Torre only won the World Series once when his team won 100 or more games (114) in 1998 when they finished with an incredible .704 winning percentage.
With his time in Los Angeles, Joe Torre has now averaged 97 wins over the last 14 seasons with a high of 114 and a low of 84! If there is an intangible in these playoffs, can it not be the managerial success of Joe Torre to win despite the odds?
The Los Angeles Dodgers arguably have the best starting rotation of the surviving clubs. With Torre as skipper, is it safe to say the Dodgers have the true intangible no other team can truly replicate?
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