King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Joe Torre set to pound the pavement after Indians eliminate Yankees. Problem is, his best skill is being manager of George Steinbrenner's team.
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Oct. 9, 2007 | The New York Yankees failed to save Joe Torre's job Monday night, losing to the Cleveland Indians 6-4, dropping their first-round playoff series 3-1, a result that principal owner George Steinbrenner had said would mean the ax for the manager.
The Indians will meet the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series beginning Friday. The Arizona Diamondbacks host the Colorado Rockies in the opener of the National League Championship Series Thursday.
Steinbrenner was reported to be fuming in his office during Monday's game, which the Indians led after the first batter. Grady Sizemore started the game with a home run off of Chien-Ming Wang, who had nothing, and Cleveland was never headed.
It's actually possible that after three and a half decades owning the most prominent baseball team in the world, Steinbrenner, in his bones a football man, doesn't understand that a baseball game between two good teams, for example a playoff game, is something very like a 50-50 proposition, and that losing a single game or even a short series is not necessarily an indication that the people in his employ are not doing their jobs properly.
It's possible. It's also possible he's wanted to fire Torre for years but found it politically impossible to do so. And that now, after seven years of not winning the World Series, which in Yankee time is almost the same as the Chicago Cubs not having won in a century, and with the Yanks trailing the Indians 2-0 in a best-of-five, it had become safe to go Queen of Hearts on Torre: Win three straight or off with your head, the Boss said before Sunday's game.
The odds against that happening were pretty steep, and even if it did happen Torre's Yankees would then have had to beat the Red Sox in the ALCS and either the Rockies or Diamondbacks in the World Series -- both roughly 50-50 propositions -- for him to escape the chopping block. And he might not have escaped his fate even then. He wouldn't have been the first Yankees manager fired after winning a World Series.
The Yankees won once, then lost, and that's it.
It's no secret Steinbrenner thinks Torre has gotten too much credit for the Yankees' run of success, which happens to coincide almost exactly with Torre's tenure. They were the wild card in 1995 under Buck Showalter, and it's possible they'd have won the World Series in '96, as they did under Torre, if Showalter had still been at the helm.
If the players hadn't killed him first, that is. That's kind of how it goes with Buck Showalter.
Next page: Joe Torre's singular genius for being the manager of the New York Yankees under George Steinbrenner