Joe Torre to Return for 12th Season as Manager of the New York Yankees

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner sure isn't the same kind of Boss he was 15, 20 years ago.

If this was the 1980s, there is no way manager Joe Torre would have survived the disaster that was the Yankees' defeat to the Detroit Tigers in the American League Division Series. But George is an old man now. Sure, his passion for winning is as great as it has ever been and he won't stop throwing millions at free agents because he can. At this point in his life, however, his bark is much worse than his bite, and in some ways it's kind of sad. But what do you expect? The man is 76 years old.

The New York tabloids were breathless with anticipation after the Yankees were vanquished by the Tigers. Steinbrenner won't put up
with another disappointing October, they predicted. Surely, Torre would be fired this time. Strike one was the epic collapse to the Red Sox in 2004, strike two was last year's first-round loss to the Angels and this was going to be strike three. I'm not necessarily saying that bringing back Torre was the right move but talk about jumping the gun. The New York tabloids never jump the gun. Yeah, right.

Good or bad, Steinbrenner just couldn't pull the trigger. Three days after the stunning loss to the Tigers, the Yankees announced Steinbrenner's decision - Torre would be returning in 2007 for the final year of his contract. It will be his 12th season as Yankees' manager, which might be a more impressive accomplishment than the four World Series titles he won in five years from 1996-2000.

You can't help but wonder if Steinbrenner made his decision based on public sentiment. Maybe he was afraid of a backlash. Even after another playoff disappointment, Torre remains immensely popular with Yankees' fans. With rumors of Torre's impending firing circulating, the New York Daily News ran a poll asking fans to vote whether Torre should stay or go. By a three-to-one margin, the fans chose the former. It was an impressive show of support, and there are a few reasons why Torre should return:

- He won 97 games and got the Yankees into the playoffs despite the injuries to Hideki Matsui, Gary Sheffield and Robinson Cano.

- He deserves to come back because of what he has done for the franchise. Yes, it has been six years since the Yankees won a
World Series and in Steinbrenner's world, that's a lifetime. Still, the man does have four rings.

- It won't make a difference who manages the team if the Yankees don't improve their starting pitching, if they don't go out and somehow find some young arms.

The Yankees had an All-Star at every position, a modern day Murderer's Row. There was no way they could lose. In retrospect, maybe the defeat to the Tigers shouldn't be considered all that surprising, even though on paper it looks like one of the biggest upsets in baseball history. Detroit won just two less games than the Yankees and led the major leagues in earned run average. It's easy to forget that because of how poorly the Tigers played down the stretch, including getting swept by the Kansas City Royals on the final weekend of the season.
Maybe what it comes down to is that good pitching beats good hitting every time. It's only been like that for 100 years in baseball.

Consider the Yankees' starters in the last three games of the series:

Game Two, Mike Mussina. I am not a big Mussina fan. I think he is the most overrated pitcher of his generation, even though he has won more than 200 games, so I'll try to be objective. Maybe the story of Game Two is the Yankees not being able to get to Justin Verlander early. Making his first career playoff start, Verlander was clearly nervous out of the gate and struggling with his control. He walked two and the Yankees loaded the bases in the first inning. They had a chance to seize control of the game in their first at-bat, but Verlander escaped unscathed when he struck out Alex Rodriguez looking for the final out of the inning. To me, that set the tone for the game and the remainder of the series, even though the Yankees did grab a 3-1 lead on Johnny Damon's three-run home run in the fourth. But some of the blame has to be pinned on Mussina. The Yankees staked him to a two-run lead. Granted, that's not a huge advantage but if Mussina really was a big-game pitcher, he would have slammed the door. He didn't, as the Tigers clawed their way back for a 4-3 victory that changed the complexion of the series. Of course, if the Yankees had any killer instinct, they would have added to their lead.

Game Three, Randy Johnson. Five-run ERA ... hit hard in his previous three starts .... 43 years old ... missed his final start of the regular season with a herniated disc. Is it the least big surprising he got pounded? What could anyone possibly expect, a miracle?

Game Four, Jarret Wright. With the season on the line, Torre opts to send a career underachiever to the mound. If that isn't symbolic of the
Yankees' pitching woes, nothing is. Why not start Chien-Ming Wang, the Game One winner, on three days' rest? Torre never even considered using Wang in Game Four. He was left behind in New York to start a possible fifth game. Wright also got blasted, another big
surprise.

But blaming the series defeat on faulty pitching is only part of the problem. That doesn't explain how a potent lineup was so quiet, how the
Yankees went 20 innings without scoring a run from the fifth inning of Game Two to the seventh inning of Game Four. It doesn't explain how the Yankees seemed to quit, give up, in the two games in Detroit. If you're going to lose, okay, fine, but at least compete. The Yankees didn't
in the two games in Comerica Park, and I can't remember the last time I could say that about a Yankees' team. That's what made the defeat so disappointing. It wasn't as painful as the collapse against the Red Sox in 2004 - nothing will ever be as devastating as that - but it was close.

These Yankees play without passion, unlike their predecessors from 1996-2001, and that I blame on the manager, more than any specific game decisions. That is why, despite the reasons listed above, I believe Steinbrenner should have changed managers. It is admittedly a minority opinion and quite different from what I wrote in August, when I praised Torre for keeping the Yankees together in the wake of the injuries to Matsui, Sheffield and Cano. I even suggested that next to Jim Leyland of the Tigers, Torre had done the best job of any manager in the American League. Torre probably will get a few manager of the year votes, maybe more than a few.

Would it have been fair to fire Torre? Probably not, but the Yankees are not like other teams. They are measured not by regular season success but by playoff success, and they have failed in six straight Octobers. If the expectations are too high, slash payroll in half and
stop talking from the first day of spring training about how the only goal is to win the World Series.

I like Joe Torre, everybody likes Joe Torre. He is an honorable man who wears the pinstripes with pride, with class, with dignity. He restored the glory to the greatest franchise in sports, and Yankees' fans must never forget that.

But nothing lasts forever, especially in sports. Torre had a great run, a wonderful run, a historic run, but it was time to make a change and
go in another direction. Steinbrenner decided to give him another year. Maybe Torre can go out on top, end his Hall of Fame career in true
storybook fashion. I'm not sure I can see it.

What I can see is the Yankees winning the division yet again next year because they do have talent and talent can carry a team in the regular season, as the Atlanta Braves will attest, but then suffering another flameout in the postseason because it takes more than talent
to win in October. It takes passion.

I no longer think Joe Torre is the right man for the Yankees. He was the ideal manager for the championship teams. He managed players
who responded to his laid-back approach, guys like Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez and Paul O'Neill, who didn't need to be motivated.

In the last five years, the dynamic of the Yankees' clubhouse has charged drastically They need a manager to come in and kick their
butts. Instead, they are going to get another year of Joe Torre sitting on the bench with his arms folded, drinking his green tea.