With unhesitating resolution Joe Torre announced yesterday that he had completed his radiation therapy for prostate cancer treatment and declared he was fit and ready to set forth on a Hawaiian vacation. But first Torre took a few minutes in his Yankee Stadium office to ponder the team that will seek a third consecutive World Series title, as the sport’s most successful club looks to extend its dominance into another century.
“I feel great,” Torre said on a conference call with reporters. “I feel real good. I know it’s going to be in my system for a while, but I haven’t had any side effects I haven’t been able to handle. I’ve been working out, my weight’s the same. I head off on vacation tonight.”
Doctors first discovered the 59-year-old manager had prostate cancer during spring training and after surgery March 18 said there was no indication the cancer had spread. After a couple of months to recuperate, Torre returned to managing May 18 in Boston, but did not begin radiation therapy until after the Yankees swept the Braves to win their third World Series in four years, all under his stewardship.
“Even though 90 percent of all side effects are temporary, in most cases, I really didn’t anticipate anything,” Torre said.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the Series ended, Torre was asked to ponder the future, rather than recollect on the gratifying past, and with a team largely intact from the previous year, he saw only a couple of unsettled areas to be resolved.
Mainly, Torre seemed to be looking forward to adding lefty Ed Yarnall to the rotation in the wake of Hideki Irabu’s recent trade to Montreal. Torre said that if the highly projected southpaw wasn’t ready, then Ramiro Mendoza would be the fifth starter. But Torre clearly favors leaving Mendoza in the bullpen and promoting Yarnall, who was originally drafted by the Mets and traded to Florida in 1998 as part of the Mike Piazza deal.
“I’m really excited to see what handing him the ball will do for him and us,” Torre said of Yarnall, who was mostly impressive in his 17 innings this past season. “He’s been tested a couple of times in some tough games and pitched his way out of tough situations. That’s a pretty good sign of guys being able to handle the heat at this level.”
As for Irabu, Torre claimed the experiment in signing the Japanese star failed as much because of communication barriers as anything else.
“I think we had some communication problems here,” Torre said, citing Irabu’s need for a full-time translator. “I think at times Hideki felt like he wasn’t getting treated the same as other people. It’s one of those things where you can’t just talk straight to him.”
With the game’s premier closer in the bullpen, a staff of proven veteran pitchers, and almost all positions claimed, Torre saw only a competition between Shane Spencer and Ricky Ledee in left field yet to be hashed out.
“There’s no major move we need to make that’s apparent to me,” he said. “There are always little changes that take place. It’s just a matter of finding a different way to get there.”
As it has been since Torre first donned Pinstripes in 1996, “there” refers only to championships, diamond-studded rings and parades.