Say it ain't so Joe!

Joe Torre, you're better than that! In the spirit of Stephen Colbert's "Wag of the finger", C'MON JOE! In a world of sensationalized, well...everything, there are few people let in the limelight with real integrity and just general, old school workmanship. No bitching, no whining, blame me first, no nonsense guys who I really respect.

Take Mike Krzyzewski, or Coach K, as he's affectionately known. That's a guy who gets it. He learned from the oldest of old school, refined it in a disciplined environment, added his own added level of caring and BOOM, ideal mentor, coach, father, and man. Yeah, I'm sure no one is perfect and he is no exception, and he would freely admit that, but that's a man right there. No fuss, no airing of grevances to the media, nothing except a common-man workman like attitude.

I have always felt like that about current Dodger's manager (former Yankees manager) Joe Torre. The buck has always stopped here with this man. No blame, I'll take it. No excuses, you make them. Talks to the media and his players like men and is one. Well, it seems we have spoken too soon.

In a soon to be published book "The Yankee Years", Torre along with his "co-author"(think ghost writer) Tom Verducci, proceeds to rip Alex Rodriguez, George Steinbrenner, and Brian Cashman. The Festivus like airing of greivances is so unlike Torre, that I am still hesitant about writing this blogpost for fear of a retraction for smearing a man I hold in such great regard. In fact, I actually hope I have to post that retraction. A man of such high character, who works in a sport of such secrecy, and former integrity is just not a man who does such a thing. Unless we have had him pegged wrong all along, which I doubt.

Now, Tom Verducci has gone on record since this came out saying that this is a huge book and this is just a small portion. I have since gone on to speculate that this is expert marketing, along the lines of "Juiced" and other books of the like that have a few scintillating pages that are exploited to its fullest for $$$$. No doubt ESPN will continuously run this on the ticker between updates on how Brett Favre went fishing with his kids today and T.O. drove by Jerry Jones's house. They will talk and talk and talk about it ad nauseum on their worthless daytime schedule after replaying Sportscenter 25 times in a row. I'm getting off topic here. Good future blog material though!

At any rate, we know Joe has always been very honest, however he has always done it in a tactful and very thoughtful way. This would certainly be a departure in demeanor for him. Possibly taking his LA state farm commercial to heart. Joe, if you are reading this, I saw on the ticker that you said you and Brian Cashman have patched things up. That's great. Please go back to the man you have always been and don't talk about any of your past, present, or future sour grapes to anyone having anything to do with any media outlets of any kind. You used to be better than that.