Come To Think of It...Joe Torre's Cowardly Response To "The Yankee Years"

It was Oscar Wilde who once said, "Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality," well then, for Joe Torre, the scandal is of his own doing.

The ex-Yankees skipper has a new book coming out just two weeks before the start of spring training. "The Yankee Years", co-written by Torre and Tom Verducci, dishes dirt on the Yankee legacy during a time that has become known as "The Torre Years." 

He's specifically hard on Alex Rodriguez and Brian Cashman.

Which is fine, maybe they deserve it.  But then don't back-track please.

Instead of standing behind the written words, Torre is choosing to be defensive about it all.  Perhaps surprised by the controversy the book has unleashed, Torre seems to be hiding behind the fact that the controversial things said about players and past Yankee management wasn’t directly attributable to him. 

This, to me, is an act of cowardice. If Torre wants to respond, he should tell us that he either said those things about A-Rod or Brian Cashman…or he didn’t.  

Hey, I understand that Tom Verducci is the co-author of the book and that his contributions are said to be a second-hand account of the way Torre and others view the baseball world. But Torre is acting like he had nothing to do with the book.

Look, his name is on it. He approved it, ‘Nuff said.

And, if ever there was a baseball manager who appears to be literary, it is Joe Torre. You can be sure he read the entire book before it was published.

So his contretemps are rather strange. Maybe the exact words the media are using to describe Torre's relationship with Cashman aren't in the book. 

For example, "betrayal" comes to mind when reading about his relationship with Cashman, yet the specific word is never used. But to deny the feeling is simply revisionist history at this point by a man trying to have the best of both worlds.

It seems Joe Torre is trying to both sell books and at the same time, not tarnish his reputation by being thought of as an informer or a hostile man. Well, you can't have it both ways, it makes you sound wishy-washy.

Instead, Torre issues nebulous statements about how he didn’t write the book and that it doesn’t contain things he hasn’t said before.

Oh, and he’s been busy calling people like Cashman to forwarn him about the book. Sounds like an apology to me.

Look, don’t apologize for something you truly believe. It hurts your credibility. Or, if you don’t agree with what was written, you either shouldn’t have signed off on the book, or you should come out and say that the book is BS.

But to simply hide behind the co-author smacks of impotence to me.

The sad part about all this is that it obscures the fact that the book seems like an excellent read.

Bloomberg.com, for instance, says that the book contains "...many insights, some about human nature, many about the great American game...Here’s a more profound one: There is a joylessness to victory. No ghost-writer could have thought of that alone.

And count former Yankees hurler David Wells among those not surprised by some of Torre's feelings in the book.

According to Boomer, if you weren't "one of Torre's boys" he didn't respect you. Now you can dismiss his comments as revenge for being burned by Torre in the book.

For Torre does say "The difference between Kevin Brown and David Wells is that both make your life miserable, but David Wells meant to."

But one thing you cannot argue is that Wells is right when he says that Torre's position that he would never publicly burn a player has proven to be a bunch of baloney.

Torre is the co-author of the book, but it contains both his thoughts and independent reporting, according to Verducci. Torre told the Times that "knowing that my name is on it, I know I'm going to have to answer for it."

He later told the Times: "I'm comfortable with what I contributed to the book, even though I'm probably going to get more credit or more blame than I deserve, whichever way you want to look at it."

So what does all this mean? It leaves us confused as to which parts of the book represent Joe Torre's true feelings and which parts merely contain Verducci's observations.

I'm sure we'll know the truth someday. Perhaps when we're reading "The Dodger Years," come to think of it.