FROM the moment Joe Torre was hired to run the Yankees, he always talked about how temporary the life of a baseball manager is, how transient it can be. From the first moment he shook hands with George Steinbrenner, Torre accepted as a personal dare the challenge of whether he could be the one to learn how to live and to thrive under that singularly draconian iron hand.
Here’s the thing: He did. Torre survived Steinbrenner. He survived all the nudging and the nagging, all the prying and the politicking, all the silly sloganeering and all the preposterous press releases. As it turns out, Torre really was uniquely qualified to work for a Boss so demanding, we’ve been capitalizing the “B” for damn near 30 years.
What Torre wasn’t able to handle, and what was destined to be his Waterloo even if he opted to accept this transparent and temporary stay, was the new way the Yankees are run, the passive/aggressive obstacle course that now passes for the organizational flow chart.
George Steinbrenner? Torre could handle him. You knew the man was in the room, and you knew what was on his mind. You knew if he was mad at you, and you knew if you were in trouble, because there was never a moment when the boss was the Boss when he would spare you the full wrath of his rage.
But Torre’s special gift was that he could defuse Steinbrenner, deflect him, disarm him. Never underestimate the magic the manager wove with his interpersonal relationships, a deft and inherent understanding of what makes people tick. It is a rare gift.
Now the Yankees are run by a tangle of titles, by a couple of Steinbrenner sons and a gaggle of in-laws and headed by a professional politician named Randy Levine who never has made any pretense about the fact he is unconvinced that Torre personally hung the moon in the night sky.
Torre always believed the harshest postgame questions asked by the Yankees’ own state-run network originated in Levine’s office. Whether that was true or not, it certainly tells you they weren’t destined to be bridge partners, and it tells you the man who ran the team on the field wasn’t necessarily prepared to share a foxhole with the man who ultimately ran it off the field.
And the man who, ultimately, ran him off the field.
So Levine officially assumes a new role for himself as the crowds disperse from the gallows from which Torre has hung the past two weeks, although it is a perfectly familiar role for anyone who has followed the Yankees for more than a couple of minutes. Levine has thrust himself into position to be what Steinbrenner used to be, if this coup d’etat doesn’t work out the way everyone on Thursday’s conference call solemnly promised it would.
He will be the new villain. He will be the new target. He will be the one that Yankees fans point to if the man selected to replace Torre turns out to be anything less than a cross between Connie Mack, John McGraw, Joe McCarthy and Miller Huggins – none of whom, for the record, ever managed a team to the postseason 12 consecutive years.
Remember in “The Godfather,” when Michael Corleone ominously and chillingly informs his treacherous brother-in-law: “You have to answer for Santino, Carlo.”? In a year, in five years, if the arrow on the Yankees’ growth chart doesn’t keep inching north, that will be Yankees fans, demanding to Levine: You have to answer for Torre, Randy. You have to answer for the insane expectations that would render Torre’s resume wanting.
And if Torre happens to pull his own little Yogi Berra boycott as a result of this – something he was tellingly ambiguous about during his public farewell press conference yesterday – well, you’d better believe Levine will have to answer for that, too. For years, Levine has been Oz, thought to have an enormous amount of influence. This week, the curtain was officially drawn back. This week, we know what we’ve suspected all along.
Of course, there is a way where this can all work out for Levine, and for the others who now populate the crowded Yankees conference room, and it’s the same blueprint Steinbrenner eventually fell into. They won. A lot. They became a multibillion-dollar success story, even if it sometimes seemed to happen in spite of Steinbrenner. Maybe that can happen for the New Boss, too.
Put it this way: It better.