Joe Torre Still Gets Love From Yankee Fans Despite Book

As my readers already know, “The Yankee Years,” written by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci, came out today, and I went down to Fifth Ave. in Manhattan to buy the book and get it signed by Torre.

It was snowing when I arrived at 9:30 a.m., three hours before Torre was supposed to start signing. There was already a line stretching around 46th St. about 100 people long. It took a little while to find the end of the line. Once I got there I was only waiting for about 30 minutes before going inside.

Posting on Peter Abraham’s blog, Sam Borden called the scene a circus. I’ve been to a few book signings before and I wouldn’t quite categorize this as a circus, especially by New York standards. One thing that could have contributed to the circus-like factor was this particular Barnes & Noble.

Like I said, I’ve been to a few book signings before and they were all at the B&N located in Union Square, in lower Manhattan. That store is huge and can handle an influx of people showing up to see authors, but this one on Fifth Ave. was very small, only two stories, and wasn’t quite capable of handling all these extra people. The store pretty much had to be shut down—but the line around the store never disappeared.

Now that I think about it more, maybe it was a circus. It was hard to tell because I spent most of my three and a half hours in the science-fiction section staring at the 30 people immediately next to me in line. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected.

Although I didn’t know what to expect, it didn’t seem like anybody cared about any of the controversy the book stirred up. Nobody was angry or there to challenge him. People were just happy to get a chance to buy the book, and everyone seemed like a big Torre fan. The media and the blogosphere might be up in arms over the entire thing, but the average fan still adores Joey Four-Rings.

By the time it was my turn to get my book signed, I had already finished reading a decent amount of the book. I’ll have my thoughts on it soon, but the first thing that I noticed is how prominent David Cone is throughout the first 75 pages I read. So when it was my turn, I asked a joke about it.

“Make sure you thank Coney for this one,” my lame joke went. “He’s quoted in it so much his name should be on the cover.”

“Well, that’s Coney,” Torre laughed, definitely humoring me. “He always had a lot to say.”

Well, I’m going to get back to reading the book. It was a fun morning and so far it’s a good book. There are a few quotes about players that are a little blunt, but so far it is nothing shocking. Based on everything he has said about David Wells so far, I doubt it would spark a fight between the two. I’m happy I bought the book and had a good time in the snow.