LOS ANGELES — Joe Torre wears his Dodgers cap high on his head, revealing a vast expanse of forehead with fewer worry lines than expected for a manager who spent 12 years working for George Steinbrenner.
He perches on the ledge above the dugout bench, arms crossed, carefully considering the pressing issues of any particular day. Torre glances at his questioner, but mostly his eyes follow his players hitting and throwing during batting practice.
At 69, Torre has pretty much seen it all in baseball — as an All-Star player, a manager of five teams, a castoff of Steinbrenner, and now a successful second act in Los Angeles.
In his two seasons here, the Dodgers have won consecutive NL West titles for the first time since 1977-78, when Tom Lasorda was behind the bench and pasta, red sauce and celebrities flowed through the manager’s office.
With his 14th straight playoff appearance, Torre tied a record for manager set by Atlanta’s Bobby Cox.
“The thing I’m most pleased about, probably, is coming here after leaving New York and inheriting a team with a lot of talent, then being able to add some special pieces and being able to have the success we’ve had in the last couple of years,” Torre said.
One thing Torre discovered about the Dodgers this season is their penchant for coming through when tested. It took them a while — a stretch of six games — to finally clinch the division.
They did it with a 5-0 victory over wild-card Colorado on Saturday that ended a season-worst five-game losing streak. Torre endured his umpteenth champagne soaking, then was content to leave the spotlight to his players.
“He and Mr. Cox are definitely two first-ballot Hall of Famers, two old-school managers who have been around the game a long, long time,” second baseman Orlando Hudson said. “They’ve managed some great players, some Hall of Famers — they’ve had it all. They’ve been through every situation that baseball can imagine having, and they’ve both done so much for this game.”
Torre’s low-key personality has gone over well in the Dodgers clubhouse. He’s never too high, never too low and rarely meddles in his players’ business, even when Manny Ramirez was suspended 50 games for violating baseball’s drug policy.
“He’s just as relaxed whether we were winning 15-0 or losing 20-0. He keeps the same mentality,” Hudson said. “When things weren’t going well for us, he’d throw a speech in every now and then. But no matter what we were going through, he’s seen it all already. So nothing that we do is new to him.”
The Dodgers have been resilient when they need to be, whether coming from behind to win games or going 29-21 while Ramirez was out.
Torre knows he can’t eliminate the daily pressure to win, so he focuses on bringing the perspective of someone who knows the game from both sides of the bench. Outwardly, he didn’t flinch even as the Dodgers watched their division lead shrivel to one game over the Rockies.
“He was still going in the weight room to work out, still laughing and talking on the bench, just taking it one day at a time,” Hudson said. “That’s just the way he is, man. He’s just relaxed, because he knows this game is not easy to play.”
Randy Wolf will start for the Dodgers in their playoff opener Wednesday against the St. Louis Cardinals — his first postseason appearance in 11 seasons.
Wolf admits nerves will get to him until he steps on the mound, which serves as his comfort zone. The left-hander said Torre is mostly hands-off when it comes to one-on-one interactions with the players, but he’s big on recognizing negative trends.
“If the team is going in a certain direction that he doesn’t like, he addresses it right away. He doesn’t like to let things carry on,” Wolf said. “He doesn’t get caught up in every moment, but at the same time, he realized that you’ve got to keep the same attitude every day.”
When the Dodgers moved 27 games over .500 to match their season high in mid-September, Torre dangled another carrot in front of them: 30 games above.
“Every team will get to that little bump in the road,” Hudson said, “but when that happened, he said, ‘All right guys, it’s part of the game. We’re going to keep going out, keep battling, having fun, having quality at-bats, and we’ll find our way upstairs at the end of the year.’”
The Dodgers haven’t been to the penthouse level since winning the World Series in 1988. Torre won four titles managing the Yankees.
He never got there as a player or manager with Atlanta, St. Louis or the New York Mets — his stops before Steinbrenner hired him with the Yankees.
“The Yankee thing was a bonus for me,” Torre said. “I was just very fortunate the other people that were on that list already had jobs to go to. I still think I was at the bottom of that list, which doesn’t insult me, when you’re talking about Sparky Anderson, Davey Johnson and Tony La Russa. I feel very blessed to have gotten that opportunity, and to have been there that long. It’s crazy.”