I'll approach the issue the way the confederacy of dunces who have seized control of my team in recent years would approach it: ass-backwards.
I'll begin with the final verdict: Quite honestly, I can't begin to understand the flap this book generated. Was anyone really shocked by any of these revelations? Did we think A-Rod was a popular figure in the clubhouse? Did we think George Steinbrenner was still running the show? Did we think any of the people running the Yankees had any concept of how to remain competitive in the shifting landscape of contemporary baseball? Did we feel good about acquisitions like Jaret Wright and Kevin Brown? Did we think the older, richer, whinier Yankees of the last few years really had much in common besides their pinstripes with the championship teams of the '90s? Anyone who answered yes to more than maybe any two of these questions probably hasn't been paying attention.
Perhaps people were shocked, not by the revelations made by Torre and others to Verducci, but rather by the fact Joe Torre, with his nice-guy reputation, would take this project on so soon, while he's still in baseball, while he still has a bad taste in his mouth. But to that, I say why not? I just don't see how this qualifies as some sort of gratuitous hatchet job. Torre got the pinstriped shaft towards the end of his tenure in the Bronx, being held singularly accountable for a host of problems for which the front office deserved at least some substantial part of the blame. It didn't take this book for me to realize that, and I doubt I was the only one.
Is it "fair and balanced"? Well, only as much as Fox News. But there's a difference: this is a memoir. It says Joe Torre right on the cover. It makes no claim to being an unbiased, impartial accounting of events. It's Joe Torre's side of the story, and a side worth hearing. The Yankee brass spin their own narratives of infallibility daily, with their cathedrals to themselves, their appropriation of the past. History is written by the winners, even when a bunch of losers in cheap suits end up in the role of winners, and so the memoirs of a winner cast in the role of a loser are always at risk of sounding like so much whining. I guess some might see The Yankee Years as just so many sour grapes, but I see it as the product of a (perfectly valid, given the inauspicious parting of ways) desire on Torre's part to clear the air a bit.
I found it to be an enjoyable read overall, though if I had one complaint it would be the lengthy digressions on the steroid scene and on the Moneyball phenomenon. I realize those two trends help to set the stage for the actual narrative, but if the "shocking" revelations about Yankeeland were less-than-revelatory, the ones about Bud Selig-era baseball at large were almost painfully obvious.
Next book review: The Year I Owned the Yankees, by Sparky Lyle with David Fisher.
This 1990 novel, nominally by Sparky Lyle, is one of the reasons I was late to the Yankee Years party. Well, really it only took me a day and a half to read it, but it was one of the books in the queue. At the time, it must have been quite the farce: computers dictating personnel decisions, a meaningless panel of fan-advisers intended to keep the masses at bay, new leadership for the Yankees quickly becoming just as drunk with power as The Boss at his very worst. Today it reads like a preview of a season yet to come. When I get around to a review, you'll be the first to know.
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