Broadcaster Bob Costas recently lauded PBS Television’s late-night talkster.  “He’s doing exactly what he was born to do,” Bob said of Charlie Rose.  “Perfect guy, in his perfect job.”

            Franklin D. Roosevelt was born to be President.  Ethel Merman was created to shatter chandeliers.  God made Frank Sinatra to caress the spoken note.  Joe Torre was born to manage the New York Yankees.

            There is said to be nothing smaller than a big businessman.  When Torre became Yanks skipper in 1995, the New York Daily New mocked “Clueless Joe.”  Recently clueless corporate suits fired – I write here as a Red Sox fan – the greatest manager in big-league history.

             A fine batter averages .300.  Torre hit 1,000, making each post-season.  Teams once went directly from a pennant to World Series.  (Joe won six and four, respectively).  Today’s skipper must take three series: a sharply steeper climb.  Two Yankees titles show the expanded-playoff change. Casey Stengel was 96-65 in 1958.  Torre’s 1998 ended 125-50.

            Numbers judge between the lines.  Joe’s genius went beyond.  He massaged George Steinbrenner — The Boss — a blend of P.T. Barnum, Cliff Barnes, and Phinius T. Bluster.  He mastered a 24/7 Apple media that devours managers like a vacuum, dirt.  The ultimate players’ manager insulated the clubhouse from a crazed, prying fandom.  As the Yanks will learn, such amalgams are hard to find.

             Like a painter or politician, a manager blares his special DNA.  John McGraw’s bent rules, bred strategy, and profaned players.  Connie Mack wed penny-pinching calm and steel.  The Ol’ Perfessor hid street-hard smartness behind a foreign language – Stengelese.  Torre’s success bared a surpassing, almost supernatural, ability to relate.  Greatest-ever?  Say it is so, Joe.

            Born in Brooklyn, the Bronx prosopopeia grew up pained by weight, bigotry, and a hard, loud father, turning insecure but empathetic:  Everyman/inner-directed man.  “Say two kids get A’s and C’s,” Joe said.  “You hug ‘em both, knowing the kid getting the C’s is probably trying harder.”  Loathing conflict, he developed “an attentiveness in his eyes which gave offer of some knowledge of the abyss,” Norman Mailer wrote in another context, “even the kind of gentleness which ex-drunkards attain after years in AA.”

            Torre was axed by the Braves, Mets, and Cardinals, left managing for TV, joined the Yanks, then beat prostate cancer.  Having risen and fallen and risen again, he became baseball’s Saint Joe, getting the keys to the city, taping David Letterman, lighting Rockefeller Center’s Christmas Tree, remaining “the person I needed to be”:  hero of every dog that was under.

            A writer once noted football’s Tom Landry “never mocking a writer’s question, no matter how absurd.  His respect for others wouldn’t let him.”  The Yankees’ disrespect for Torre – “I had to sell myself [to them] after 12 years,” like a rookie.  “I took it as an insult” – led to the future Hall of Famer’s stunning adieu.

            New Yorkers daily brook disrespect:  vulgarity, congestion, bile.  Joe’s grace improbably transcended it.  An old cliché said, “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel,” except that it was no cliché.  Somehow Torre put a human – God place the mark — loveable face on a loathed, even hated, franchise.  It would less surprise if Madonna became a nun.

            Merman was once asked if Broadway had been good to her.  “Yes,” she mused, “but then I’ve been good to Broadway.”  The Yankees were $50 million in salary good to Torre.  In turn, baseball’s Charlie Rose was even better to the team now/again reviled:  perfect man, perfect job, in Joe’s perfect town – his own.

            Torre helped the Yanks draw more fans than ever, build a billion-dollar TV network, and forge the greatest dynasty since Stengel.  Next year, leaving one Yankee Stadium for another, they will miss his continuity – above all, Joe’s class.  Pick a term:  cynical, inane, an ignominy, a calamity.  Today there’s nothing smaller than sport’s biggest team.

           

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