End Of An Era

Last Year's Axe Falls This Year

It seemed like it was definite last year that they were going to sack Joe Torre, and they didn't. This year, George said he would sack Joe, but instead they offered him a 23% pay cut, which he promptly rejected.

"We respect Joe Torre," Yankees president Randy Levine said. "He is entitled to his own decision and we respect that.

"It's now time for the New York Yankees to move forward. We will be doing that very, very quickly."

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and other team officials met for two days and decided they wanted to keep Torre, whose contract expired at the end of the season.

But the Yankees wanted to spend based upon results. Their performance-based offer was a one-year proposal for a five million-dollar base salary with one million-dollar bonuses for each playoff round won by the Yankees next year.

That made the deal potentially worth eight million dollars, but would give Torre a pay cut unless the Yankees won the World Series.

The offer also included an option for a second year at eight million dollars for Torre if the Yankees reached next year's World Series.

After the Thursday morning offer, Torre turned down the Yankees rather than take a deal that would be a pay cut from a three-year deal worth 20 million dollars that brought him 7.5 million dollars this year.

It's what happens when things get complicated, protracted, and generally filled with difficulty.
There's a lot of web-electrons being marshaled to express the outrage of this outcome, but in some ways it is the most rational outcome. Maybe it was a year too early, or a year too late, but the Yankees couldn't go with Joe Torre forever. The Yankees simply had to change directions at some point. Perhaps this is the year they have to start searching for something new.

On Joe's side of the ledger are all the things that make fans groan in their seats at every pitching change, but the reality is that he had a good run of success and nobody can take that away from him. At 67, there are worse ways to be than Joe Torre, even if he is unemployed.