Thursday, February 5, 2009

Torre's Book This Year's Fist Pump

Well, there seems to be one Spring Training question that we've already got an answer to: What will be this year's ridiculous controversy made for probably no other reason than that it involves the Yankees.

Last year, it was Joba's fist pump.

This year, it's Torre's book.

It's a controversy for a few reasons, but perhaps the biggest one is that Torre seemingly violates the unwritten code that what goes on in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse.

Now, I'm not a guy. I don't know how serious these man-codes are, and I, perhaps fortunately for everyone else, have never possessed the athletic gift to play on a team. So the entire idea of a locker-room culture is a bit foreign to me, like the idea of offering Pagan sacrifices to the gods. I understand the concept, but I will never fully understand it because I'm not a part of it.

But anyway.

Regardless of my ignorance, what did apparently happen here, is a breach of trust.

The players trusted Torre, told him things in confidence, things that were never meant for the public to here. Whether or not the players should have trusted Torre is obviously another story, but for now, what's important is that they did and Torre broke that trust.

While the Yankees might be fine moving on from now, seeing as Torre is no longer their manager, you have to wonder what's going through the mind of the LA Dodgers, whom Torre manages. The tenor in that clubhouse now will likely be somewhat awkward--I mean, what if you were a Dodger and your boss just sold out his former workers?

I was told the other night that at Torre's book signing there were crowds cheering for him, though I have to wonder what portion of the crowd were Yankee-haters or simply fed-up Yankee fans as opposed to die-hard Yankee fans. I'm not delusional; the latter probably outnumbered the former, but I'm still curious to see what the split was.

So I guess in this sense this controversy isn't perhaps as pointless as the fist pump, but, at the same time, it's destined to become a favorite distraction of the media.

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