The sports coverage is one of the few good things about the paper.
I was thinking of the N.Y. Times reporters who cover the team. Fortunately I don’t subscribe to or read the Post or Daily News (shudder).
For baseball coverage, I like the Post, Daily News and Star Ledger reports. NY Times, not so much.
Because of course watching 40 Yankee games a year isn’t enough, but 120 is.
It doesn’t matter what the Yankee Expectation is. It’s irrelevant, because it’s stupid and isn’t based on reality. You cannot guarantee a World Series win in a four year span no matter what team you are or how much you spend, and that’s that. Facts do not change because of irrelevant “Expectations.”
I’m with storyteller 0910 on this one; Torre is ridiculously underrated, and the decision to let him go was retarded. There is no available candidate I would have any reason to believe would do as good a job. There is an air of utter, moronic stupidity hanging over New York about this entire issue.
But then, much could be said about the lingering campaign to run the team’s best player out of town, too, which lasted several years and seems to be dormant right now. This is a dual example of Carter Syndrome; the propensity for fans and management to blame failures on the team’s BEST people, rather than its actual weaknesses, such as, oh, I don’t know, the shitty starting rotation.
Losing Joe Torre makes the Yankees a worse team. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I will say this, though. If they hire Bobby Valentine, which is unlikely but still mentioned every once in a while, it will make the whole thing worth it. Valentine is a lot smarter than most baseball people, is a decent manager, and is a massive child and egotist who likes needling people to see how they react and treats a baseball team like a giant chemistry set. Can you imagine how he’d go over with the Yankees? It would be Armageddon.
That would be so awesome.
“…I just didn’t think it was the right thing for my players.”
What a pathetic asshole. He did it for his players- what a pompous prick!
He doesn’t feel the need to prove himself- where did he get the idea that anyone was asking him to do that? Many many many contracts have performance incentives- Peyton Mannings does IIRC- does anyone take that as the Colts are asking him to prove himself? It’s a way to give you extra money for doing something you plan on doing anyway right? What a dick.
I wondered how he would twist it to make himself look like the poor victim. Basically, he doesn’t feel love and respect from George based on the offer? How old is he, ten? Who gives a fuck? Big long term contracts make you feel loved is that how your feeble brain works? When has George ever showed Torre love in the last several years, isn’t he always on his ass? This deal supposedly shows that they aren’t seeing him as working together with them long term- so I guess if they had offered him a 5 year deal worth 1 million per, he’d be ok because that’s showing they want him long term. Torre is so fucking delusional its pathetic.
“The fact that somebody is reducing your salary is just telling me they’re not satisfied with what you’re doing,” Torre said Friday at a news conference.
How can it be both “a generous offer” and “an insult”? It can’t, you’re just talking out of your ass again. Too many batted balls to the head Joe? Steinbrenner calls you daily and tells you he’s not satisifed with your performance. But as long as the salary is 7.5 mil, you don’t mind it.
Fuck you you fucking 67 year old crybaby.
Let me see if I get this right, You offer someone a base salary 45% higher than the next highest salary in the league, with incentives bringing it up to a potential 130% higher, and that’s considered ridiculously underrated? I suppose the only proper way to rate him is to pay him 2.5 or 3x the highest amount any other manager has ever been paid in the history of baseball.
Yet, he is still apparently unable to actually affect whether or not the team wins games, since that’s a function of the players he’s provided. Maybe they should take some of the $7M they save next year and put better players on the field.
From the fact that the contract said “we’ll give you an extra million for each round of the playoffs you win, and consider bringing you back if you win the championship.” How is that not asking him to prove himself?
Most contracts have them- when you’re talking about players. And incentives are a small part of those contracts except in the case of a player who has to prove himself. Somebody who is a proven star will get a lot of base pay and small incentives, which he will usually reach without trouble if he stays healthy. A player coming back from an injury or something - or, in the case of Ricky Williams, an idiot who negotiates a bad contract for himself - will get relatively little base pay and a lot of incentives, which is the team’s way of saying “we’re taking a risk on you, but if you do really well you’ll get rewarded for it.” The Yankees weren’t taking a risk on Torre.
With very rare exceptions, that’s how every single player and manager’s brain works. You sound like you don’t follow sports and just sort of decided this was what you wanted to complain about.
So politeness and class are the kind of thing that earn a “fuck you” in your book? No big surprise there.
With all due respect, I think my post makes it quite clear that I am not referring to his salary, but the general impression of him among fans and media.
If he had class he would not have called it an insult. And if he weren’t a media whore he wouldn’t be having a news conference about it. Look at me, poor Joe, bottom lip quivering in the wind, the sweet guy who gets picked on and abused by the evil bad man! He could have issued a statement- The Yankess made a great offer, but I just think its time to move on. Period.
Here’s a way to sum up Joe Torre. George showed him he wasn’t wanted when he made the statement two weeks ago to the effect of ‘I don’t think we’ll have him back if he loses in the first round’. George has made dozens of statements insulting Torre, veiled threats, everything, for years. This statement and the others tells you you aren’t exactly well thought of, that they don’t just love having you around but will keep you until something better comes along. But that didn’t bother him enough to quit then. It was only after he heard the salary that he quit.
In the mandatory press conference after the Yankees were eliminated by Cleveland, Torre referred to the speculation about whether he’d be kept on as manager, and (semihumorously) said that as he hoped to spend some quiet time with his family he hoped reporters wouldn’t be camped out on his doorstep waiting for news/reaction.
By holding a press conference now that things are settled, he’s probably hoping to satiate the media vultures and not have people endlessly pursuing him for interviews.
Personally, I think Joe Torre is a decent guy, a really nice guy actually. Baseball managers are pretty much pointless, but as far as they go, he does a good a job as most I guess. I just don’t think he’s being honest about the whole deal. The reason is that being honest would take a little shine off of this Saint Joe persona he’s got going.
Are you from New York? The Yankee manager of 12 years and 4 championships is no longer with the club…there will be a press conference. It has nothing to do with him being a media whore. It’s actually the right thing to do since the media would be folloowing him around trying to get something out of him in the weeks to come. Or camp out in front of his house, like they did in front of the Boss’ house.
Torre is the classiest manager/head coach of a team New York has seen in ages. I’m pretty much a Yankee hater, but I can’t get on board with the crap you’re flinging. The Yankees didn’t want him back, and were to pussyfied as an organization to just come out and say it. If anyone lacks class here, it’s Randy Levine and the Steinbrenner clan.
Point taken.
On the impression side, what I am latching onto is the fact that Torre came into the Yankees job with a pedestrian, below .500 resume spanning 15 seasons. Now, he’s turned into some sort of uber-coach, that no other human could ever hope to measure up to.
I’m not buying it, i’ve seen enough of him burning out relief pitchers, and doing wacky crap like batting A-Rod 8th to know that he makes some bad decisions. Other managers can do a good job and maybe a change of atmosphere is what the team needs.
Without the Yankees Torre would be a has been former player/manager, maybe would be broadcasting double A games, maybe a base coach somewhere, maybe running a construction company in Piscataway, or a casino greeter perhaps. Because of them he is a rich, famous, world series winning hall of famer.
Wee Bairn, I’m just wondering, now that Joe Torre is close to signing a deal with the Dodgers, for basically $5 million a year for three years, are you still saying his not re-signing with the Yankees was just about the money?
It’s basically the same amount money the Yankees offered him, per annum, but without the incentives/punishments built into the one-year, hurdle-laden the Yankees’ offer.
In my less than fully informed opinion, I thought all along it was about the insult of an offer from a current employer that would cut an existing salary by $2.5 million. Would you take a 1/3 pay cut from your existing salary, when you have performed better than the vast majority of employees doing what you do (as Torre did), just not as good an a group of idealists thought you should’ve?
In addition, would you finally tire of the insults (threats to fire while playoffs were still going on, the past affronts, the stress of just that alone, etc.) and the almost impossible demands built into the hoop-jumping items in the proffered contract when you’ve already proven yourself?
I’m not asking you (or anyone) to rehash the Yankees argument per so, but wondering how the current offer being made and about to be accepted has affected your opinion.
(Mods if this is a resurrected zombie or a thread I should have restarted and linked to, please close this. I didn’t have the vitriol to start another thread.)
What this tells me is that good ol Joe was working a deal with the Dodgers whilst still under contract with Yanks. Not that its not done by many. If this deal was for his old Yankees salary, I’d say I was wrong. But since this deal from the bit I saw is still less then the pay reduction the Yankees offered, and since Joe himself said the Yankees offer was an “insult” to him, that he didn’t feel like he had anything to prove, my worth nothing opinion is that if the Yanks had offered his old salary he’d still be there, and he didn’t want the embarassment of accepting a pay cut- my two cents, no cites 
.
Pay deductions are an insult, demotions are an insult. If my job cut my pay I’d quit in a minute, because I can get a similar job in same field for same pay fairly easily. Now if I quit my five dollar an hour a job because I was getting a decrease to four and I took another job that paid three, I’d think there was more to it.
Also Don Mattingly quitting so easily tells me Joe told him he was bringing him to LA with him ahead of time. Don’s quitting without the LA deal info at the time was odd too- he quit the team because a person with experience got a job he wanted, when Don didn’t have the expeience? It seemed bratty, but in retrospect makes sense.
This tells me that you’d rather make shit up than admit you might be wrong. Stop digging, man. It’s getting to the point where you can’t embarrass yourself much further - but that doesn’t mean you should try to do it!
I wish I’d said that half a dozen times during this thread.
Oh wait…
What if you were already set for life and were more interested in a good work environment than the money?
He was only “bringing him to LA” if Mattingly didn’t get the Yankees job - which, until about last Tuesday, he was expected to do. After that, or maybe even before, I’m sure Torre got in touch with him about what was going on with LA.
In the course of hearing about Torre going to LA, by the way, I learned that he used to be the broadcaster for the Angels. So, no, I don’t think he’d be working construction or a casino greeter.
Some of the voices you here telling you stuff may not be real. A little discretion may be in order.
Seriously, are you going to follow behind every post of mine from now on and make veiled references to my other thread? He asked me directly my current opinion on this now that other events have surfaced, and I gave it to him, as you’ll notice without any of the nuances that made my other thread bothersome to most here. Move on ok? Or don’t. I thought I was going to be responding to the request on my current opinion, not trying to rehash the original debate, just responding to a request from a fellow member.
Marley23, your rebuttals are valid, and I respect your opinions.
In addition to what Marley23 has said (and, well, Contrapuntal too), I’d like to respond.
I’m not sure what you mean by this or why it matters. It is obvious that Torre wanted to stay with the Yankees if the price was good enough to compensate him for managing the team and putting up with the additional stress of the job. Negotiating with someone else during a negotiaton period makes sense: either (a) the negotiations for the position you want is obviously not going well and you reach out to others because you see the writing on the wall; or, you begin talking to other teams because you’ve turned down an offer and, even if the expiry date of your contract hasn’t arrived, you don’t just sit there. It turned out not to be and Torre went out and got another job.
You’re right about that and, yet he’s going to end up somewhere at the same proffered salary, with a three-year contract, and 99% less head- and ass-ache and way less chance of winning the World Series any time soon. Wonder why? The difference? The constant head- and ass-ache and the fact that his negotiating position with the Dodger is different. So it had to be about more than the money.
There is; see my last comment.
The new partner at my law firm brought along her old secretary and a legal assistant; an associate is coming later this month. Do you think she waited to tell any of them the night before they left?