COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Joe Torre held a bat used by Babe Ruth in the basement archives at the Baseball Hall of Fame. And one by Lou Gehrig, sitting just feet away from a Yankees jacket Torre wore in 1999 — complete with the stress ball he kept in the pocket as Yankees manager.
But it wasn’t until he got to the Plaque Gallery that the familiar Torre emotions seemed to hit him as he looked at the blank slate on the wall where his plaque will be placed later this year.
“You have Babe Ruth’s bat in your hand on one table and on another table, there’s my jacket and hat. That gets your attention,” Torre said as he sat in front of Ruth’s plaque. “But this is the best part. This is the shrine of baseball.”
It has been a long journey for the 73-year-old, who managed the Yankees to four World Series titles.
Torre remembered much of it during a two-hour tour with his wife Ali.
Though Torre won’t be inducted until the ceremony on July 27, he already has a presence in the museum, from a scorecard he signed from the Yankees’ 112th victory in 1998 to other memorabilia from his managing days.
But he also has some connection with seemingly half of the players enshrined.
Looking at Bob Feller’s first pro contract, Torre told a story about how the Hall-of-Fame pitcher sold him his first insurance policy.
“It was with Northwestern Mutual,” Torre said. “Who’s going to say no to that guy?”
Standing in front of Mickey Mantle’s locker and jersey, Torre recalled being in Braves camp in 1961 in Bradenton, Fla, when he was behind the plate and Mantle came up.
“I looked up and he was a giant of a man,” Torre said. “Even though I wasn’t a Yankee fan, I knew what he meant to the game.”
Torre famously grew up a Giants fan and got to look at Russ Hodges’ scorecard from the “Shot Heard ’Round the World Game,” complete with the box next to Bobby Thomson’s name, where Hodges started to score the homer, but never finished, distracted by his call.
Torre wore his World Series ring from 1996, because that was his first championship, and when asked if there was anything left for him to do in baseball, Torre still brought up the fact that he never made it to the Series as a player.
But he doesn’t have many regrets.
“To wind up in Cooperstown, even when it got to the point of knowing I was on the ballot, yeah, there’s a chance that’ll happen, but when I actually did get the call, it still stunned me,” Torre said. “It’s been an amazing ride for me. This is all gravy now. … The game has always been reluctant to get away from me.”
As MLB’s vice president of baseball operations, Torre said he’s “holding his breath” about how the use of instant replay impacts the sport, especially because of the lack of changes made over the years.
“We really haven’t done a lot,” Torre said. “We’re going to replay this year and I’m holding my breath. The reason I do that is we haven’t done anything to change this game. … The NBA added the 3-point line and the 24-second clock and in football, players have gotten bigger and stronger and they’ve had to do certain things. This game’s been pretty good on its own and we’re putting replay in there.”
Reviews have been slow to come this spring, because the full replay system is not yet in place and most spring training sites don’t have the same equipment that will be used in major league parks.
Nevertheless, Torre remained confident the move would be a positive one.
“You can’t ignore the technology,” Torre said. “You don’t want missed calls to affect the outcome of the game. But you look back on history and the game has survived it.”