SULLIVAN: In November of 1995, when Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner, introduced the newest Yankee manager, Joe Torre, Met fans everywhere had a good laugh.
The Shea faithful remember Joe Torre as a slow pant-load of a player who holds one Met batting record: hitting into four double plays in one game. After that 1975 horror show, the beat writers asked Torre how he felt about his dubious achievement. Torre, he always did have a sense of humor, blamed Felix Milan—who hit before him—for getting four singles, thus causing the double plays.
Torre went on to manage the Mets in the late 1970s and helmed some of their worst and forgettable teams. He then went on to a mediocre spell as a St. Louis manager and found himself announcing baseball games on TV as a color man until the Yankees pulled him out of obscurity,
Well in 1996 Joe Torre was the right man at the right time for the Yankees. He had a calming presence in the zany world of the Bronx Zoo that Steinbrenner presides over. Torre had a fine career as a player but with his four World Series rings and 11 straight playoff teams with the Yankees he is now a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame.
So in 2007 the Yankees are not a very good team. In March I predicted that they would not even make the playoffs. None of this is Joe Torre’s fault. Signing punks like Bobby Abreu and Carl Pavano are why the Yankees are floundering. Joe Torre and Derek Jeter and A-Rod are about all the Yankees have at this point and to fire Torre for the sins of Steinbrenner and GM Brian Cashman is just a big bowl of wrong.
Last year, when the Atlanta Braves struggled and did not make the playoffs for the first time in 14 years, no one called for their manager, Bobby Cox, to be fired. The Yankees will struggle this year but for all he has brought to the Bronx, Joe Torre needs to be the Yankee manager as long as he wants.
HOLLANDER: Joe Torre should’ve won manager of the year last year. With practically season-long injuries to two of his best hitters, Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield, a career low and near meltdown season for Alex Rodriguez and the miserable albatross of Randy Johnson, Torre captained that leaky Yankee clipper to a runaway division title. How will firing this guy help?
Torre has heard it all before. George needs to do something to show he’s still in charge—that he’s still George. So he grumbles about firing the manager. At this stage of his mental disintegration, does Steinbrenner even know who the manager is?
Maybe they ought to bring in Paul Sorvino. He did a great job managing the Yankees in the 1997 TV Movie Joe Torre: Curveballs Along the Way. The way he resuscitated the career of Doc Gooden, played by the homophobe-in-the-making Isiah Washington, is just the type of velvet hammer today’s Yankees need. Paul Sorvino has played real New York guys throughout his career. He’s got the walnuts. His performance as Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas and Sergeant Phil Cerreta from the early days of Law and Order shows that Sorvino possesses the requisite New York City bona fides for the job.
At least Sorvino can act like manager. What are they going to do? Say now is the time for Don Mattingly. That guy has less of an emotional pulse than Torre. We need a Billy Martin type—somebody who boozes it up at night and plays it crazy on the field. Most of all, we need to chill. It’s early. Give it another 20 to 30 games. Then let’s talk.
SULLIVAN: Paul Sorvino is a fat, overrated actor. You want to bring in an actor to manage the Yankees let us enlist John Turturro. Turturro, a Brooklyn native like Torre, will play Billy Martin this summer in HBO’s Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning.
Turturro has that zany wildness of Martin and he is a loose cannon. But I digress. It is May—Yankee fans need to chill. If anyone can right this Ship of Fools, it is old reliable Joe Torre. Plus, if Torre goes, Jeter will go into a funk that will make A-Rod look like Mister Rodgers.
A lot of Yankee fans are front-runners. They panic at the first sign of hardship. Mariano Rivera—maybe the most valuable Yankee of all time—blows a save, and they are writing the guy’s obituary.
Steinbrenner is nuts and on his last legs. Cashman is clueless. Torre remains the lone voice of reason in the Bronx. The Yankees fire Torre, they will enter an age that will make their futile teams of the 1980s look like Murder’s Row. Yankee fans better hope Torre stays on and doesn’t pack it in: sick of all their moaning.
HOLLANDER: You’ve got some nerve. Paul Sorvino is an American treasure. Put aside for a minute his blubbering when Mira won the Oscar. That man has given his life to the theater! And he does it for slobs like you. What does he get in return? Petty barbs about his weight from a closeted Italo-phobe. Your mean-sprited comments stink like Joe Torre’s pre-operative prostate.
Actually, I’m looking forward to Turturro’s performance in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning. He was masterful as Howard Cosell in TNT’s Monday Might Mayhem (2002). He didn’t imitate Cosell. He channeled him. Greatest portrayal of Cosell ever. You could see Turturro’s love and knowledge of popular sports culture shine through. I can’t wait to see him do Billy Martin.
Though, I’m willing to bet that Brooklyn natives Turturro and Sorvino are Mets fans. Most enlightened people from Brooklyn are. You’re right about Yankees fans. They are a thin-skinned bunch. The year 1996 was the last time they earned anything. They go on WFAN after an unremarkable loss and cry like sick children wanting mommy to make it go away. Suck it up, Yankees fans. Nothing gets handed to you in this life. That’s why they play the games—all 162 of them.
