Replies

But Torre and Brenly had proven unfit mothers both, for the first time.

Look, Let's call a spade a spade here.....Forget Brenly....enough of that from last year....But Torre? Torre?

I am sooooo tired of this St.Joe crap. HE was a mediocre manager with both The Cards, and The Mets....And now, that he manages a team, that has Most Committed to Winning Owner in baseball, seemingly having grown up, the most spending cash, is a Franchise Players WANT to come to, and is in the American League for crying out loud, so the DH negates most of the managerial decision making.....And NOW he's a great Manager....Sheesh.

MY 4 year old could manage that friggin team and win 90 games.

Actually, he was a good manager of mediocre Cardinals and Mets clubs (he won a division before that with - drumroll, please - an eaely 1980s Atlanta Braves team who assuredly overachieved that particular season). He isn't exactly Casey Stengel or Whitey Herzog, but Mr. Torre is a very good manager. And anyone who says that simply anyone could have won 90 games managing last year's Yankees (huh? not the 114 games of the 1998 Yankees?) is talking through his chapeau.

But they made the same arguments about Stengel, too. Stengel had managed even worse teams in Brooklyn and Boston before taking the 1949-60 Yankees. The point that he had previously been trying to teach John McGraw baseball to the Bad News Bears was simply irrelevant to a good prejudicial image, sometimes even after Stengel had won his ten pennants in twelve seasons. All the cash, wheeling and dealing, and franchise-player attractiveness on earth is not going to guarantee you a damn thing. (Were it not for a shortstop who seems to have learned how to play defence from Bob Cousy last October, the 2001 Yankees wouldn't have even gotten to the League Championship Series.)

But Torre is a good manager. If any manager in this game seems to be overrated today, it is Tony LaRussa.

The main problem during the time Torre managed the Cards was that Gussie had died and the heirs (and others) didn't give a damn about improving the team and spent as little as possible on them.

The best thing that happened is when they sold the team, but by that time Torre had been fired and hired by the Yanks.