Saturday, October 20, 2007

So Long Joe ...


"To everything there is a season ..."

The biggest news in town is that Yankees manager Joe Torre has walked away from team. George and that gang offered Joe a reduced salary, one-year contract and Joe, perceiving it "an insult", turned it down and quit.

This wasn't a surprise. The Yankees glory days of the 1990s are long past and the last few years haven't been stellar. Twelve years is a long time to manage a baseball team and, even though this is a rather sad way for it to end, Joe Torre's managing career with the Yankees will go down in baseball history. All those World Series and division wins, making the playoffs every year he ran the team - truly historic achievements. Joe was so successful that he raised the bar for himself impossibly high. How could anyone, even Joe himself, live up to such a standard? He didn't of course, and that's why it's over now.

But Joe will be fine, and so will the Yankees, and so will New York City. Life is not predictable and nothing is preordained. Life is not a play being acted out according to a script. But the vicissitudes of life have a way of forcing our entrances and exits. And Joe, after shining on this stage, has taken his last bow.

On behalf of all New Yorkers, Mr NYC thanks Joe Torre for his service to the Yankees and our city's spirit. During my college years in the late 1990s, living far away from Yankee land, the team's multiple World Series victory gave me insurmountable pride. And of course, it made me an insufferably arrogant bore. But my joy in the Yankees success was very real and helped, in a very small way, to make those years all the more memorable. And Joe did it. Thanks again.

"... a time for purpose under the sun."

Torre Could Manage Steinbrenner and Yankees



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