Joe Torre
Joe Torre
Joseph Paul "Joe" Torreis an American professional baseball executive, serving in the capacity of Major League Baseball'schief baseball officer since 2011. A former player, manager and television color commentator, Torre ranks fifth all-time in MLB history with 2,326 wins as a manager. With 2,342 hits during his playing career, Torre is the only major leaguer to achieve both 2,000 hits and 2,000 wins as a manager. From 1996 to 2007, he was the manager of the New York Yankees, whom...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAthlete
Date of Birth18 July 1940
CountryUnited States of America
I saw a draft of this year's schedule halfway through last year, and you had to see this series right away. The schedule might have been preliminary. But I knew this series wasn't.
I think his last two outings are the best ones he's had all year. I don't know if he's getting stronger or just feeling better.
I think it will be more comfortable for him. I think that's been from Spring Training all the way through. It's been less hectic than last year.
We're not trying to rush him to get ready for any particular date. But compare this year to last year and it's night and day for him.
We're hoping he's healthy. That's No.1, first and foremost. All the reports that we've had is that he's been on a regular routine throwing ? not throwing off the mound, but everything seems to be good. He's a big horse for us. When he was a free agent last year he was at the top of my list. We were fortunate enough to be able to sign him. He just never was right. Mel can tell you, from spring training on he just didn't feel right. It was just something that nagged him all year. Finally we shut him down. Hopefully that stuff is behind him.
We're in good shape. We're playing well, and after last night's ugly one, we came back and did some good things.
I have a feeling I'm going to make all the phone calls. I'm not going to hesitate doing that, because I learned my lesson last year. I don't call him because I need to get support; I just think it's important to stay up to date.
If we had tied it last night, I would have brought him in for the ninth inning, even though that's something I don't like to do. The need to get him in a game is important.
He's cool. He's having a good time. He just really told people a lot more with this last start than we learned since he came over from Colorado. Obviously, we needed every bit of it. Now we can reunite with Moose again because we haven't seen him in about five days.
But we understand what they did to us last time.
Randy was excellent. The last two times out he's been lighting it up.
Things like that happen. That's why baseball is so unpredictable. You don't play it by the clock. You can't freeze the ball. You have to get every single out, and every single one of those outs, especially the last five or six, are very tough to get.
I've talked to him all year about thinking small, and big things will happen. When you're fighting for a pennant, everybody here will remember that at-bat (on Saturday) rather than a two-run home run when you're up by six runs. I don't think he would have done that last year because he would have been trying to do something bigger.
I've talked to Bernie and I think he's comfortable with it. Emotionally, he is fine with it. It is just that the last day of July was the day it had to be done. It was in his contract.