TAMPA, Fla. – Why, Joe?
Why would you soil your legacy this way, throw dirt on your reputation like this? Why would you do anything to crush our communal memory of what should be among the greatest eras in the history of sporting New York – the Joe Torre Era with the Yankees?
PEYSER: REVOLTIN’ JOE’S WHINE TURNS BITTER
Why, Joe? Why would you take a blowtorch to that bridge? Why would you justify all the sinister things your enemies always hinted about you: that you were a champion grudge-holder, that the disparity between public pied piper and private grouch was considerable, that you were someone who’d do just about anything for a buck?
Did you really need the money this badly, Joe?
Did you honestly need to do the very thing that would cause you to write off a similarly chatty – and greedy – player under your stewardship?
How many times did you usher into your office a player who’d wandered – or merely inched – off the reservation, aired him out for griping about his role, about being sent to the bullpen or the bench, about his contract?
How many times did you preach as sacrosanct the oldest and most cherished credo of the clubhouse: “What you see here, what you say here, let it stay here when you leave here”?
How many times did you gush about the “honor” and the “privilege” of wearing Yankee pinstripes? A hundred times? A thousand times?
There was this especially poignant chestnut you offered in March 2001, a few months after the Yankees’ three-year reign as world champions ended in Game 7 of the greatest of all World Series:
“I think each of us, when we slip into this uniform, it changes you because it’s all about being a part of something bigger than all of us, better than all of us,” you said that day, in your spring-training office at Legends Field in Florida. “When you represent the Yankees, you represent some of the greatest things there is: baseball, New York City, class, dignity.”
This book of yours, “The Yankee Years,” is that classy, Joe? Does it dignify what those 12 remarkable years were to baseball, to this city and, not incidentally, to your career? Was it necessary to air the fact that his teammates call Alex Rodriguez – an awfully easy target, by the way, Joe, and also a guy who won two MVPs while playing for you – “A-Fraud,” or to liken him to the crazed Jennifer Jason Leigh character in “Single White Female”?
Seriously, Joe. Did you even see “Single White Female”?
Why would you take shots at Brian Cashman? All he did during that lengthy post-2000 time, when you weren’t winning championships, was defend you exhaustively – to fans, to the press, to fellow Yankee executives, to various and sundry Steinbrenners, to your old front-office pal Randy Levine.
You never much cared to admit this, Joe, but Cashman was your boss. He could have sold you out. He didn’t.
Cashman deserved better, Joe. So did the Yankees. And, most important, so did you. You transformed yourself as a Yankee, earned yourself a certain Hall of Fame plaque.
There were lots of people who thought you were exiled wrongly in 2007, who winced when you hinted at a possible grudge with the Yankees, who figured, no, Joe is bigger than that. Joe is better than that.
Were we really that wrong, Joe? Really?
If you wanted to hurt the Yankees, Joe, understand this: Yesterday at Legends Field in Tampa, workers were manicuring the field, watering the lawn, getting ready for another spring training once the Super Bowl leaves town.
At the minor-league complex just down Dale Mabry Boulevard, kids were working out. Jorge Posada was said to have taken some swings. Derek Jeter will be here this week.
The Yankees have moved on, Joe. Isn’t it time you did, too?