So much for Tim McCarver’s claim that the Joe Torre has been airbrushed from Yankee Stadium. The FOX broadcaster told listeners Saturday that there’s “no sign of Joe Torre at the stadium.” But TV personality Keith Olbermann, went around Yankee Stadium the other day and counted 21 pictures of Torre, both outside and inside the ballpark. (Go to his Baseball Nerd blog to see some of the images.) There is even a luxury suite number 6, featuring pix of the last man to wear #6 – Torre.
I appreciate that Olbermann took the time to set the record straight with some photo evidence, something no NY paper tried to do.
He writes about the issue:
I’m a fan and friend of Tim McCarver’s, and Joe Torre is my oldest baseball friend. I’ve even worked with them both. And I know the Yankees could have done better by Joe, and his exit was unceremonious and poorly-handled by the club. I would also argue that the Yankees are the most self-important, overly-serious franchise in overtly pro sports (I can think of about 27 college programs that would at least give them a run for their money).
But Timmy was just wrong, in style and in substance. Neither literally nor figuratively have the Yankees excised, erased, airbrushed nor Memory-Hole’d Joe Torre. Doubtless the day will come soon, perhaps even while he’s still managing elsewhere, that they will formally retire the number and give him the big ceremony he deserves. To see a conspiracy in the fact that the day has yet to come is, at best, to overreact.
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