Just heard that Joe Torre and Don Mattingly reportedly will be attending Monday’s Yankee Stadium ceremony to honor George Steinbrenner with a monument in Monument Park. Donnie Baseball will be a welcome face at the ballpark. Joe Torre, not so much, at least for me.
I’m not about to let bygones be bygones and welcome Torre back to the ballpark with open arms. Not when he has never apologized for the way he bit the hand that fed him for twelve years. Not as long as the vile “Yankee Years” book remains in print, where he trashed The Boss when he was unable to defend himself. And certainly not after Torre and his wife Ali compared Steinbrenner, the man of honor tomorrow night, to Torre’s own abusive father, the monster who threw Torre’s mother down the stairs when he found out she was pregnant with Joe Jr.
What a phony Torre is to even have the nerve to show up in the first place. He’s going to “honor” Steinbrenner’s memory with his presence, right? Spare me the sanctimony. Just by showing up, Loe will make the evening all about him. If Torre were as classy as his PR machine claims, he would stay away, and not make a mockery of the night.
I remember how Joe and Ali Torre “honored” Steinbrenner back in November, after the Yankees won the World Series. They had an interview with T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, where, as I noted in a Faster Times piece, they described Steinbrenner this way:
“George was such a domineering figure in Joe’s life and his father was like that,” says Ali Torre.Joe Torre backed that comment up, saying about his experience as Yankee manager, “That was a big part of it with George too. I don’t know how many times I told George, ‘The only thing I wanted to do was make you feel proud of what I’ve done.'”Columnist Simers didn’t raise his eyebrows at these accusations. Instead he agreed, writing, “The abused going full circle, five times as likely to become the abuser, the experts say, or become abused again. Or go to work for Steinbrenner.”
Torre’s wife used that analogy again in another part of the interview:
Ali Torre told her husband and Simers, “The parallel was very similar to what you had with your father. Some of the people in the Yankee organization were bullying you and not treating you with respect all along. You kept trying to survive until you got worn down.”
Comparing domestic violence to the travails of the highest-paid manager in baseball history? Oh please.
It’s funny. Torre constantly accused Alex Rodriguez of hogging the spotlight, and making everything all about him. Guess it takes one to know one.
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