Joe Torre on what he regrets from 2004, friendship with Bill Belichick, and how he’s received in Boston
"I was going to tell him not to get too fancy. It was just a sense, to go after him."
With the latest chapter of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry playing out on baseball’s postseason stage, Boston fans have a chance to see a former New York fixture in an unusual place: alongside Bill Belichick.
Joe Torre, Yankee manager from 1996-2007, will be a guest at the 5th Annual Bill Belichick Foundation Hall of Fame Huddle on Oct. 12.
“He came to spring training when I was managing the Yankees and hung out with us for a couple of days,” Torre recalled. “I’ve gone to a number of playoff games to watch his Patriots play, so we stay in touch on a regular basis through texts. I’m a fan and a friend. The last time I saw Bill was at the Belmont Stakes.”
Yet Torre, now the chief baseball officer under league commissioner Rob Manfred, has another sport on his mind at the moment, even if he’s technically a neutral observer.
Few people embody the spirit of the Yankees’ dynastic years more than Torre. His calm disposition masked the unrelenting stress endured in a decade-long tenure at the helm of baseball’s most polarizing team.
And Torre’s Yankees – much to the chagrin of Red Sox fans – won more often than not. Between 1996, when Torre became manager, and 2000, New York won four World Series in five years. He was also on the losing end of the famous (or, to New Yorkers, infamous) 2004 American League Championship Series.
Red Sox-Yankees from the manager’s perspective
Asked to describe what stands out in his mind when he thinks back on managing in the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, Torre was unequivocal.
“Exhaustion,” he said simply. “That’s the first word. I know [former Red Sox manager] Terry Francona and I used call each other after a series and say, ‘Well, I’m glad this is over for another six weeks or whatever it was.’ It was just exhausting.”
For Torre, keeping his team focused on the baseball game at hand was the most difficult part.
“Baseball was the best part of it, but everything surrounding the series or a particular game was always magnified tenfold. And as a manager, I used to get impatient – and I had a lot of patience in dealing with stuff – I was really impatient with trying to make the proverbial mountain out of a molehill, in trying a theme through it because of this or that. Like A-Rod or Varitek had this thing, and that’s what [they said] motivated the other team. I’d like to believe that just playing each other was enough, but that’s where the exhaustion came in. I was just trying to keep the focus on the game itself.”
How he views 2004 in retrospect
Looking back on the 2004 ALCS, when the Yankees squandered a 3-0 series lead to the Red Sox, Torre recalled having a sense of the looming danger.
“I remember in Game 4, we had a 3-0 series lead, and we a one-run lead. I remember telling both Don Zimmer and my pitching coach, Mel Stottlemyre, ‘I need to win this game right here.’ I was a firm believer that in the postseason, momentum was one game at a time. And when you have it, you try to hold onto it.”
It was this sense of urgency which led to Yankees closer Mariano Rivera being called in to get six outs instead of just three in Game 4. Thinking back to what happened between the 8th and 9th innings, Torre admitted his lone regret from the series:
I think the only thing I could’ve questioned myself about – and really I’m not totally sold on it – was before Mariano went out for the 9th inning, knowing that Millar was the first hitter, I was going to tell him not to get too fancy. It was just a sense, to go after him. I just changed my mind because the last time he’d faced Millar, he’d struck him out I think on four or five pitches at Yankee Stadium, so I stayed away. I didn’t really talk to pitchers who were in the game anyway. But in retrospect you look back in realize Fenway Park is not Yankee Stadium. In Yankee Stadium, you have a little more freedom, because in the confines of Fenway, you have to be a little more careful and Mariano was trying to make perfect pitches.
Rivera walked Millar, setting up a 9th inning Red Sox rally. Boston went on to win the game in extra innings on the first of several clutch moments from David Ortiz.
“We’ve also been the beneficiary of good breaks”
Still, Torre has managed to keep the defeat in perspective, even in the context of baseball’s greatest rivalry.
“We were the beneficiaries of so many things that broke our way,” said Torre, “and just as recently as the year before in 2003 when Aaron Boone hit the home run. The Red Sox had Pedro [Martinez] out there with a four or five-run lead, you figure that’s a sign that it’s over, but we were able to come back and win that game. So when we come out on the short end of something that was lopsided in our favor, I can only look at it and say we’ve also been the beneficiary of good breaks too, so it was just one of those things.”
And one thing about the Red Sox-Yankees back-and-forth that’s always amused Torre is the treatment he receives when he’s in Boston.
“I’ve enjoyed Boston. I always kid the Red Sox fans that they’re really nice. They’re always nice to me. I say, ‘Something happens when you go through the turnstile at Fenway. I don’t know what it is.’ There’s a respect they treat me with up there, and I’ve always appreciated it. My daughter graduated from BU, so Boston’s no stranger to me.”
