"The Yankee Years" Lost Forward

After receiving our copy of Joe Torre's "The Yankee Years" here at The Bronx View, we were struck by the fact that there was no forward in the book.  Confused but curious, we began a Mitchell-like investigation into whether a forward had been written and, if so, by whom.I am happy to report that, for the first time since the media blitz started two and a half weeks ago, we are able to show the unpublished forward to Joe Torre's "The Yankee Years," as written by Rubén Sierra. -- You may be wondering why a guy like me was chosen to write a forward for a Joe Torre book.  After all, in his first book with Tom Verducci, Joe had some very critical things to say about me not being a team player. It turns out, Uncle Joe was right.  You see, I was actually with the Yankees in 1995 when Buck Showalter was the manager.  They traded Danny Tartabull for me near the deadline to help make a playoff push. I was still a bit of a cocky kid but Buck didn't seem to mind. Then, Seattle beat us in the ALDS and Buck didn't come back.  In came Uncle Joe.  At first, I was excited.  Joe had been around the game a long time and used to cover the Angels in the late eighties, so I saw a lot of him when I was with the Rangers. Joe seemed a natural in front of the camera. When Joe got into the managers office, it became obvious that he didn't have much tolerance for BS.  Joe basically said to us on the first day of spring training, "we work as a team, we play as a team.  If there's a problem, you let me deal with it.  Keep it between us." I was cool with that, although I probably didn't follow it as close as a I should.  I shot my mouth off a few times and Joe really didn't like it too much.  Then, after DHing me for most of the season, he started sticking me in left field, supposedly to show me off to get traded, which they did on July 31st of that year. I was mad.  Real mad.  They shipped me off to Detroit, which seemed like some kind of cruel baseball prison at the time.  It was then that I made one of the dumber statements of my career, "all they care about is winning." That is all the Yankees care about, and they should.  But I also learned, it's all Joe Torre cares about.  You see, I didn't play the game by Torre's rules.  Torre didn't want any of his players creating drama in the press.  If there was a problem, Joe wanted to address it.  It took the external pressures off his team by focusing them squarely on him. It had another effect, though.  It put Joe in the spotlight.  Whenever there was a problem, Joe's good soldiers, under the wise training of David Cone, would tow the company line, deflecting any thoughts about conflict or controversy.  Then, Joe would sweep in and put out the fires, occasionally ripping into a reporter if that's what it took. It was a strong managerial move to help stabilize a team.  But it also made Uncle Joe the face of the first baseball dynasty in twenty years.  He became the king of New York, going from Clueless Joe to Uncle Joe, weeping on the field and hugging players like a father after they achieved something spectacular on the diamond.  He placed himself at the center of success and made everyone feel like they could count on him.  By grabbing the spotlight away from a team of great players, Joe changed his public persona from unsuccessful manager to the most marketable face in the sport. The Yankees brought me back at the trade deadline in 2003.  Joe and I hadn't spoken since the book with his negative comments about me came out but we smoothed things over pretty quickly.  I played by Joe's rules this time, keeping my mouth shut and leaving the cameras to him.  We made it to the World Series that year and lost to the Marlins, but nobody was saying it was Joe's fault. In the off-season, I was resigned by the Yankees to a one year deal, but it was apparent the team's culture had already changed.  First, Hideki Matsui had arrived in 2003 with an entourage of reporters both foreign and domestic.  Then, David Wells had shaken things up with a rather unflattering book.  Later that winter, it was leaked that Jason Giambi had testified to a grand jury that he had used steroids.  And finally, Alex Rodriguez and all of his baggage arrived just before the 2004 season. Joe was noticeably flustered.  He had lost control of the media in his own clubhouse.  He was no longer the center of the media world and, as the team began to struggle in the playoffs, Uncle Joe's star began to tarnish.  He wasn't the darling he had been before and was dogged by rumors of his firing on a near daily basis. He tried to divert some of the attention away from his media-darling players to himself, but was always met with the same questions about his future, about why he couldn't make this team of superstars win a championship. In 2006, it seemed like Joe had had enough.  I had to watch from afar in Minnesota, but I knew exactly what was happening.  Tom Verducci printed an article about A-Rod's struggles in the Yankees' clubhouse and Torre was the main source.  Joe had finally had enough of taking the blame for his team's failure to perform.  He decided the best thing to do to protect his image was to show the world just how dysfunctional the media-darlings of the clubhouse actually were.  Then, the fans and the world could see that it wasn't Torre's fault. And that leads us to this book.  For those of you that may think this book is a little too revealing, a little too out of character, I say you haven't been paying attention.  The Yankee Years as described in this book were always about Joe Torre, always about the betterment of his image, if not through success than through the deflection of failure.  What may have once appeared as a very unselfish man was in fact an opportunistic one indeed.