(Full disclosure: I am a Yankees fan). I don’t view it as a whiny response. I watched his press conference today and he clearly stated $5 million is a heck of a lot of money and certainly more money than he will make this year. Torre viewed it as an insult to offer only a one year contract with a reduced salary and incentives. The incentives themselves were insulting, he said, because he viewed management as saying he needed extra money to be motivated, when that clearly wasn’t the case.
I like Joe; he’s a class act. This wasn’t a Patrick Ewing type quote (i.e. he wasn’t saying anything to the effect of he couldn’t feed his family on such a paltry salary). He was mainly stating a fact that for all he did for the Yankees organization (playoffs every year he was there, ten AL East titles, 6 World Series appearances and 4 World Series championships vs. only 1 playoff appearance and no World Series appearances in the 10 years prior to his arrival) they weren’t willing to work with him at all on the terms of his contract. And yes, it does appear insulting to think the manager who brought so much to the team needs extra incentives to be motivated after all he had done for the organization.
In any case, this isn’t Torre being greedy or saying that $5 million itself is insulting. I’m pretty sure from his comments today that he doesn’t feel that way at all. He mainly just viewed the overall terms as insulting, and I frankly have to agree. He did a great deal to turn that franchise around and successfully managed an entire team of egos; he didn’t deserve to be treated this way, but it’s par for the course for Steinbrenner.
Oddly enough, I think George Steinbrenner was in Joe Torre’s corner throughout this whole ordeal. Joe specifically mentioned that there were “two people” from the team’s management group that were pushing for them to do whatever it took to rehire him, and my instincts tell me that those two were George Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman.