Don't Do It, George

To use the elegant tennis term, the New York Yankees have been excused from Major League Baseball's annual postseason tournament. When Cleveland reached their 2 games to none advantage George Steinbrenner's handlers roused him with the report. The elderly, ailing Boss declared that unless the Yankees came back to win the ALDS series, the Yankees almost certainly would not want Joe Torre back as manager next year.
Somebody needs to tell the pitiful old coot that Billy Martin is still dead.
And that it isn't Joe Torre's fault.
Joe has managed the Bronx Bombers for 12 years.
Casey Stengel managed the Yankees for 12 years. He won 7 World Series and 3 more AL pennants. He had one 100 win season. He managed before the amateur draft, before limits on numbers of minor league teams and when the Kansas City Athletics were little more than another Yankee farm team. He started with DiMaggio and Berra and continued on through Mantle, Ford and company.
Joe McCarthy managed the Yankees for 16 seasons. He won 7 World Series and one additional AL pennant. He had six 100 win seasons. His tenure preceded Stengel's so there were no limitations on what the Colonels' money could do in those days. And McCarthy greatly benefited from the Boston Red Sox' owner Harry Frazee forking over his best players (Ruth, Pennock, Bush, Hoyt, etc) in gratitude for the Colonels' loan at the time of the Ruth sale. He also had Gehrig, Lazzeri, DiMaggio, Dickey and all the others.
Miller Huggins managed the team for 12 years. He had Murders' Row. He won 3 World Series and 3 more AL pennants. He had two 100 win seasons. He preceded McCarthy, so, again, for all intents and purposes, there were no rules prohibiting the Yankees from doing anything that they wanted to do. Huggins had the Babe in his prime years. He had the young Gehrig. He had incredible pitching, largely courtesy of the Boston Red Sox.
Joe Torre has won 4 World Series and three more AL pennants. And he had to navigate three rounds of playoffs each time. His predecessors went straight to the World Series after winning the regular season. Joe won 10 straight AL East division titles. He finished second to Baltimore in 1997, and second to the Red Sox this year. That's NEVER lower than second. McCarthy had three thirds and a fourth. Stengel had a second and a third. Huggins had two seconds, two thirds, a fourth and a seventh. I will repeat. Joe Torre's Yankees have never finished lower than second. Not once.
Joe Torre has had 4 seasons with 100 or more wins. He has managed in the draft era, designed to help the worst clubs get better, and slow the best teams down. And they have been the best team of this era. Torre has produced a twelve season record of 1173 and 767. That's an average of 98 wins per season. Free Agency has helped, but also hurt, as King George has continued his practice of bringing in anyone to whom he takes a shine, whether or not the fellow fit in the clubhouse, could perform any longer, or had the skills that fit with Torre's style of play. The Boss gave away prospect after prospect in trades for aging players. He gave Jason Giambi $120 million to butcher everything hit his way in the field, and be a constant distraction with the breaking of the steriod story. Then there's ARod. Every playoff failure isn't his fault, but Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle just didn't disappear in the postseason the way that Alex Rodriguez seems to do.
Perhaps more significantly than anything else, Joe Torre is the only one of the four great Yankee managers who spent his career having to put up with Steinbrenner. With Huggins and McCarthy, the Colonels Huston and Ruppert put their team in the capable hands of Ed Barrow, and followed his instructions to stay quiet and out of sight. Dan Topping and Del Webb were too busy with their Las Vegas interests to bother Stengel, until they decided that Bill Mazeroski's home run had made Casey too old to manage any more.
Joe has been reviewed, critiqued, hung out to dry, threatened, cajoled and generally abused, apart from his bank account, since the day his hiring was announced. He has had the perfect manner, personality and temperament to man the home dugout in Yankee Stadium. He has accepted all of George's vitriol, stupidity, and advancing dementia, and in the process, shielded his players and allowed them to just concentrate on and play the game through all these years.
At this point, he has earned the right to retire if he wants, but to continue if he wishes. But that's not the Steinbrenner Way.
I hope for Joe Torre, a decent, loyal, able baseball man, that Hal Steinbrenner isn't in charge in name only. Baseball and the New York Yankees will be poorer if Hal's old fool of a father is allowed to pitch a fit and fire his manager.