TORRE TALKS

Yankee fans, rest assured: the cool, calm and collected Joe Torre is still in charge of his team. Though reporters from the Daily News and the New York Post sensed tension in the subtleties, Torre addressed a host of issues with his usual poise and patience:

Torre disputed the idea that the pitchers – the biggest reason for the defeat – weren’t ready. “To put that in the category of not wanting it enough, you can’t,” he said. “It was just a bad week. I hate to simplify it.

“Am I going to say they were hungrier? I hope not; let’s put it that way. It was never a question of focus. I would’ve been the first one to address that. I would’ve taken the hit. If we had been lackadaisical, I would’ve told you (reporters).”

Torre seemed disappointed when the subject of Steinbrenner’s shots at Jeter came up.

“He’s a young man,” Torre said. “Baseball nowadays, by the time you leave the park, it’s midnight. Everywhere he goes, someone recognizes him and calls someone or tells a writer.

“His performance is very consistent. We wouldn’t be sitting here with the four rings without him.

“He never will match up with the other shortstops (Alex Rodriquez, Nomar Garciaparra, Miguel Tejada) offensively. But what he brings to the team other than that are more important for us.”

…”Who hit a ball harder in the postseason than he did?” Torre asked of Jeter, who hit .500 (8-for-16) with three RBIs in the four-game ALDS loss to the Angels. “The play of the whole division series was Garret Anderson catching that ball down the left-field line, and to this day I don’t know how that happened.”

With the score tied, 1-1, in the fifth inning of Game 4, the Yankees had runners on second and third with no outs against tiring Jarrod Washburn. Jeter pulled a fly ball down the left-field line that Anderson caught on the run a step away from the fence. It scored Juan Rivera from third for a 2-1 lead, but it kept the Yankees from a big inning as Washburn retired Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams to strand Alfonso Soriano at second. The Angels scored eight runs off David Wells in the home fifth on their way to a 9-5 victory that ended the Yankees’ season.

“As many balls as [Jeter] hits to right field, Garret Anderson got a great jump, but that game is out of hand if that ball goes by him,” Torre said. “To me that was the play of [the series]. But [Jeter] hit bullets every time up.

“Derek doesn’t have to prove anything to me. As long as I make the lineup card out, that’s all I care about.”

…Torre has occasionally kidded his players in team meetings, mock-urging them to play well to “keep The Boss off my back.”

Now, Steinbrenner may have climbed aboard – one of the few times he’s challenged Torre like this publicly. But Torre is trying to remain focused.

“I don’t feel any different,” he said. “Within myself, I’m sure that I know what I’m doing. I’m satisfied with what I’ve accomplished, but it’s not enough. I still like this, I still want to do it.”

My cousin Gabe, the Met fan, sent me an e-mail yesterday, and told me that he enjoyed the Ken Burns interview, with one exception:

The last part, the part about it being impossible not to like Jeter or Bernie Williams or to not respect for Joe Torre…well, that’s just hooey, of course.

I like Torre for his demeanor quite a bit, and think he does a great job as a clubhouse manager–a kind of publicist and managing director for the team. As a
field manager…well, managing in the AL is sort of a silly business, in my opinion. It’s like being good at backgammon or checkers. There are only so many
permutations. If you negatively impact the outcome of the game, it’s due to sloppiness; if you positively affect it, you’re just doing what you should.

Would you say that a manager’s most important in-game decisions almost always concern when to take pitchers out and when to leave them in?

I would say Torre’s most important in-game decisions is which side of Zimmer to sit on. But for a more sophisticated response, let me turn to Earl Weaver, who was profiled by Thomas Boswell in an article titled, “The Best Manager There Is.” (From “How Life Imitates the World Series.”)

“I can sum up managing in one sentence. Everybody knows all the strategies. Nothing’s changed in a hundred years. A manager’s job,” Eaver defined, “is to select the best players for what he wants done.”

Weaver beams, knowing the complexity hidden in that thought.

“A manager wins games in December. He tries not to lose them in July. You win pennants in the off-season when you build your team with trades and free agents.

“Smart managing is dumb,” says Weaver. “The three-run homers your trade for in the winter will always beat brains.

“The guys who says, ‘I love the challenge of managing,’ is one step from being out of job. I don’t welcome any challenge. I’d rather have nine guys named Robinson.” [Is that Frank or Brooks?]

…”People say I’ver never had to manage a bad team…Well, that’s the point. If you dig hard enough year-round, you should always be able to find players who can do what you want done. They’re not all great players; but they can all do something.

…”The man’s a genius at finding situations where an average player–like me–can look like a star because a lot of subtle factors are working in your favor,” says John Lowenstein. “He has a passion for finding the perfect player for the perfect spot.”

…”Earl gets coaches who are teachers, then he doesn’t get in their way,” says pitching coach Ray Miller. “He doesn’t tell me, ‘Why don’t you teach Sammy Stewart the window-shade-release slip pitche?’ He says, ‘Jesus Christ, I’m sick of looking at that horseshit changeup. Get him a new one.'” With his absolute faith in his own baseball eye, and his coaches ability to polish skills, Weaver manages as though victory were an inevitability.

“Patience…patience,” he often says. “You must remember that anyone under thirty—especially a ballplayer—is an adolescent. I never got close to being an adult until I was thirty-two. Even though I was married and had a son at twenty, I was a kid at thirty-two, living at home with my parents. Sure, I was a manager then. That doesn’t mean you’re drown up.

ZIM CHUCKLES

Popeye Zimmer, who is old friends with George Steinbrenner, took the Boss’s off-season lashing in stride:

“He is The Boss and he can say what he wants. I am a 72-year-old guy and I can say what I want,” Zimmer said yesterday on the way out of Legends Field. “He said it and I laughed at it. Joe called me from Hawaii to feel me out, and I said to Joe, ‘I am going to spring training feeling good.’ “

WEAVER IN GOOD SPIRITS

String-bean pitcher Jeff Weaver reported to camp yesterday and said all the right things:

“I don’t feel like I am fighting for anything. This is a great spot to be in,” Weaver said yesterday when he reported to Legends Field. “Whatever I am told to do I will do, but there is no doubt in my mind I am best suited to being a starter for this team.”

“No doubt, starting is where I feel I’m best. Starting is what I’m gearing up for. I think it’s understood and everybody realizes where I should be in the future, whenever the future is.

“I can’t go crazy or I’ll lose juice at the end of the year. I’m not going to change anything because of the competition.”

AFTERMAN PROMOTED

Jean Afterman, the Yankees assistant general manager, who was credited by her boss as being a major player in the Godzilla Matsui deal, was promoted to vice president yesterday.

“We have and continue to rely upon Jean’s experience and guidance as we move forward with our international initiative,” Yankees chief operating officer Lonn Trost said. “The globalization of the New York Yankees is, in part, evidenced by her expertise and work ethic which has proven to be an invaluable resource to our baseball operations department.”

Looks like Yankee announcer Suzan Waldman Georgie’s only girl after all.