Torre Earns More Respect With Classy Yankee Departure

Of all the Joe Torre analysis the past 24 hours, I think Wallace Matthews said it best in Newsday.

"They made him an offer he couldn't accept. They are very slick, these thugs running the Yankees, the way they can murder a man and then tell you it was suicide. That is what Randy Levine was trying to do yesterday with Joe Torre : Make Torre look like the bad guy, the ungrateful guy, the greedy guy, the guy who ultimately fell on his own sword, when in truth, it was Levine and the Boss Brothers, Hank and Hal, who plunged the knife into Torre's back.

"There's no other way to interpret a one-year contract, a 30 percent pay cut and insulting "incentives" based on the crapshoot known as October baseball. After 12 playoff appearances in 12 years, more than 1,000 wins, four world championships and 10 division titles, Joe Torre was being asked to audition for his job all over again."

Excellently put. What more can any organization want than 12 straight postseason appearances? Yes, the World Series parade is all that matters to Steinbrenner & Co., but true baseball watchers understand just how hard it is, year in and year out, to make the playoffs.

After all, the Yankees - despite their first-round playoff loss to Cleveland - were the only team who made the 2006 postseason to also reach the playoffs this October.

"It's the end of chapter, it had to come to an end in the road,'' Torre said this afternoon on "Mike & the Mad Dog" on WFAN in discussing his last talks with the Yankees high command. "I said to myself, 'I've been here 12 years, if there's some kind of spot we can both live in let's find it.' That certainly wasn't the case."

Photo of Joe Torre meeting the media on Oct. 19, 2007 by Michael Nagle/Getty Images

Torre, in his usual calm demeanor, explained how even after all he did for the Yankee franchise these past dozen seasons, he had the sense his bosses were looking to send him away.

"I didn't have to be reminded that getting to the World Series would make you try harder,'' he said. "That insulted me, no question."

Torre also said he thought winning in the regular season should count too.

"The fact is that of all the teams in the playoffs last year, we were the only ones in it this year,'' Torre continued. "The expectations were always high here. I know it will be very strange for me not to go to the Stadium at my usual time next season."

Torre said he didn't reiterate to the Yankee hierarchy in Tampa yesterday that at one point, his team won 14 straight World Series games (from 1996-2000).

He didn't have to.

His record speaks for itself.