The Yankee Years [Hardcover]

 

 

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If you are a Yankee fan, this is must reading. If you are a Red Sox fan, you may enjoy the book more than you think. If you are a Rays fan, it will give you hope. If you are a Dodger fan, it will add to your admiration for Joe Torre.

I admire Joe Torre and as a life-long Dodger fan was thrilled when he came to Chavez Ravine to manage. I wasn't surprised when the Dodgers made the playoffs. It's a big loss for the Yankees, but the miracle is that Torre was willing to put up with the Yankee ownership and leadership so long.

I also live in Boston and usually don't miss a pitch of any Red Sox-Yankee games. I was pleasantly surprised to see that The Yankee Years explores the underlying reasons why the rivalry went from being one that the Yankees comfortably dominated to one that has more recently favored the Red Sox. Just to give you a sense of how seriously people in Boston take the rivalry, I was stopped several times as I walked down the street carrying this book by people belligerently asking me if I was a Yankee fan.

Although the Yankees are the subject here, the book spends a lot of time on the newer ways of picking free agents, the effects of the luxury tax and subsidy to the small-market teams, better ways to develop players, steroids and HGH, and other general baseball subjects. For someone who isn't a Yankee fan, this made the book more interesting. If you are Yankee fan, you probably won't think it's all so great since much of it points out weaknesses in the Yankees.

Although I don't read the New York baseball reports columns, I was surprised to see that the book contained very little information about the Yankees that wasn't covered in Boston. Now if you don't live in New York or Boston and can't watch a lot of the Yankee games, this book may be of more interest to you than someone who keeps on top of the franchise.

I liked the way the book lets the record speak for itself in pointing out how badly pitchers picked up by the Yankees have performed in recent years. Joe Torre is a classy guy and he wasn't going to just trash everyone. Using numbers and statistics to portray how well Torre did with an ever weaker set of players . . . despite having a very expensive payroll . . . was deftly done.

I found the book overall to be enjoyable, but too long. With some editing, it could have been much shorter. A lot of the points are repeated way too often.

This book is very dissapointing because if you happened to follow the Yankee regularly between 1996 to 2007, you'll learn next to nothing.
The question of trust between Torre and his players, between Torre and management is central to the book, so central in fact it's like a song played over and over again.

Spend your money on some other baseball book.

At first glance it seemed strange that when "Sports Illustrated" published an excerpt from this book in a recent issue that it was the final chapter of "The Yankee Years." But now that I have read the book it makes sense because from start to finish the punchline that the Yankees let Joe Torre walk away from the job of managing the team pretty much overshadows everything that happens. It is like there is a subliminal message behind every success Torre had on the field that whispers to the reader "Can you believe they would ever fire this guy?" I started rooting for the New York Yankees in 1965, and for those of you without an encyclopedic recollection of the history of the team that was the year they stopped winning World Championships until George Steinbrenner bought the team from CBS and started playing his own peculiar brand of money ball. When Torre was hired to manage the Yankees I did not think it was necessarily a bad move, but I certainly did not think it was a great move. Any doubt that it was the right man in the right place at the right time, was removed years ago and "The Yankee Years" only confirms what seems obvious to everybody in baseball. It also reinforces the idea that the aforementioned punchline is not even remotely funny.

Joe Torre's name comes before Tom Verducci's and there is no doubt as to which of them has the greater cachet (I was always suprised that he was not the first manager that McFarlane Toys put out as an action figure in their quest to have at least one Yankee in each and every series). But "The Yankee Years" is much more Verducci's book; he is the one telling the story and making the arguments, with Torre providing period commentary. There is a sense in which the book reads like a documentary, and you can imagine the clips of Torre or any of the players and other baseball people quoted running. In fact, there are portions of the book in which Torre's voice disappears, and that brings into focus the other supporting voices in the story. Representing the "Before" and "After" perspectives are Yankees pitchers David Cone and Mike Mussina, with the attendant irony being that unlike the old Charles Atlas ads, the "Before" period for the Yankeees is the better one where they were winning four championship in five years.

As the years go by and Scott Brosius, Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez and Bernie Williams are repalced by Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi, and Johnny Damon the reader is repeatedly reminded that these new players have not produced titles like their predecessors (I would be willing to bet that Brosius, O'Neill and Martinez are mentioned more often in the book after they had retired or left the Yankees than when they played for Torre, and with each mention they take another step towards being on the fabled plateau of Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio). It is not privileged as such, but for me the decision not to resign Andy Pettite is the line of demarcation and it has been all downhill for the Yankees since that point. That being said, despite Torre's refusal to blow his own horn when he speaks in his own voice in this book, Verducci makes an excellent case for Torre's Hall of Fame credentials as a manager, not just because of the seasons with the rings, but with the results he got with teams that should not have made the playoffs. For Steinbrenner and Yankees fans a year without a World Series title is an empty cup even if it is otherwise filled almost to the brim. This is presented as the stark reality of the New York Yankees, and although there is an obvious impulse to think it is not fair, I am reminder that in life nobody promises fair and then you die.

The villain in the piece ends up being Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, in part because George Steinbrenner's deteriorating health becomes an abrogation of the Boss's power. A strong undercurrent of the book is Verducci's indictment of Cashman as the GM, specifically in comparison to a couple of his counterparts, Oakland's Billy Beane and Boston's Theo Epstein. "The Yankees Years" certainly chronicles all of the bad moves Torre has made on the field, but on balance the good moves certainly outweigh. However, by the end you are hard pressed to use up all of the fingers on one hand trying to count the good moves Cashman made as GM, especially given the growing litany of overpriced broken down pitchers the Yankees have signed this century. In a lesser battle, now rendered irrelevant because of his admitting using steroids, A-Rod is seen as not even playing the same ballpark as Derek Jeter, and if there is a new indication of steroid use as a result of this book it is going to tar any player that demands his own trainer. It is unfortunate that Rodriguez's admission has become the unwritten coda to this book, but it should have been the final masterstroke of irony, namely that last season for the first time since before Torre took the helm, the Yankees did not make the playoffs, while Torre's new team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, did make it to the postseason. Yankees fans might not want to admit it, but it makes for a better punchline.

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