At a press conference on Friday, Joe Torre made his first public comments about the Yankees’ one-year $5 million offer to manage in New York next season. And in short, he wasn’t happy about the whole ordeal.
“The fact that somebody is reducing your salary is just telling me they’re not satisfied with what you’re doing,” Torre said Friday at a packed news conference. “There really was no negotiation involved. I was hoping there would be, but there wasn’t.
“If somebody wants you to do a job, if it takes them two weeks to figure out, yeah, we want to do this, should do this, yeah, you’re a little suspicious,” he added. “If somebody wanted me to manage here, I would be managing here.”
“I offered a concept we may talk about,” Torre said. “I don’t want to go into Xs and Os here. More a concept that would work for both of us. It was term and how to go about it. But that was it. Money wasn’t involved in the suggestion.”
“I was very much at peace with my decision,” Torre said.
Let’s face it, the Yankees knew all along that Torre wasn’t going to accept their deal, but they tried to save face by at least offering him a contract. For better or worse, the Yankees have an image to uphold and Torre wasn’t getting the job done. This is the way they operate and therefore, why they’re either hated or respected as much as they are. Owner George Steinbrenner goes big or goes home, so the way he handled this situation with Torre shouldn’t be a surprise.
