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
We're grinding these games out, playing nine innings.
When you start talking about right-handed hitters for the Yankees who hit 40 home runs, there are only two of them. That's hard to believe, and the other guy is named DiMaggio. You know he's special.
We've beat up our umpires. They're now allowed to be human.
With negotiations, you never know what's going to happen.
We're fine. We're ready to go. Everybody's had enough work.
We're ready to go. We're as ready as we're going to be.
We're in a pennant race, but the mentality is more of a postseason situation where every game is important enough to win right now, ... We can't be thinking long term.
Every time the Yankees go to spring training, you have to be thinking World Series. I don't think that's a disrespect to any other team. It's just understanding the pressure that goes with playing here.
It gets to the point where they just stopped thinking, went out there and reacted. It was sort of a playful determination that they had out there.
At some point soon, I'll sit down with Bernie and we'll go over everything. I have a great relationship with him, and always have. I've probably talked to him more than any other player here in my tenure. If the first game of the season were today, I'd say he'd be the starting DH. But I also want to give him a lot of time in the corners (left and right field), with the emphasis more on him playing right than left, spelling Sheffield.
And it's been work for him. I think I discovered over the years how hard it is to do what he does because he doesn't have the instincts a lot of these players have.
He's a third baseman playing first, but he's very upbeat about everything. I told him, 'The only thing you should concern yourself with is getting better.' The fact that he can play more spots makes him more valuable. He was very comfortable.
May 6, I wasn't really concerned, because there was a long way to go. The only concern we had was playing up to our capabilities, because we felt the wins would come.
It's nothing unusual that pitchers and catchers from time to time have issues. It's the emotion that goes along with playing this game.