The Yankee Years by Joe Torre, Tom Verducci Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Yankee Years
Book Review: A bit of a disappointment
Summary: 3 Stars
Definitely not the juicy tell all book we thought it would be. And I hoped that this book would've been more of an autobiographical tale, but turns out just to be a book about the Yankees, spoiled brats and all. Verducci's writing is mediocre at best. He seems to have just typed up the book according to Torre's dication for the most part. Gramatical and spelling errors abound.
Not really worth the price, nor the space it will need to occupy on my bookshelf. Read only if you're a true Yankees fan.
Book Review: A great read
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed reading this. I live in Philly and am a Phillies fan, but my husband is a Yankee fan and when I first moved to the U.S. in the mid-90's he taught me all about baseball and we spent October after October watching those awesome Yankee teams from 1996-2000. I fell in love with baseball, and those players and how they approached the game, and I loved the way Joe Torre managed those guys. The book is a great read, and not just for Yankee fans. It is an insider chronicle into the greatest baseball team of our era, and a very revealing look into the game we love. And so nothing lasts forever and teams change and players come and go, but I think it's very unlikely we will see a team like that any time soon, in the new era of parity (which is kinda great for fans like me who finally had a parade of our own!).Book Review: A must for any Baseball fan.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was even better than i thought it would be. In fact I would recommend this book not only to Yankee fans but to Baseball fans in general. It's a very interesting read.Book Review: A unique and somewhat baffling presentation
Summary: 4 Stars
The former manager of the New York Yankees --- and one of its most successful --- teams up with Sports Illustrated's senior baseball writer for this unique and somewhat baffling presentation. Although Joe Torre gets top billing as the nominative author, the reader will get the impression that Tom Verducci is telling the story, since the narrative is written in the third person.
Torre was a former All-Star and Most Valuable Player during his 18-year career. He also managed the New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals before taking over the reigns of the New York Yankees.
For the most part, this is a standard baseball tale of hard work, success and frustration. The last element is especially so when one understands that Torre's employer, George Steinbrenner, has been one of the most hands-on (or meddlesome, depending on one's point of view) owners in the long history of the game. He went through mangers like a cold sufferer goes through a box of tissues. Since acquiring the team prior to the 1973 season, he had hired --- and fired --- 13 field generals, including Billy Martin five times and four others at least twice. Torre added a stability to the team that hadn't been known since Casey Stengel led them to a constant stream of pennants and world championships from 1949-60.
From the very beginning, Torre took control over a mix of veterans and rookies and molded them into a team, as trite as that might sound: The Yankees ran off a string of three consecutive World Series titles and four in five years.
Ultimately, THE YANKEE YEARS is a sad tale on the natural order of things in the sports world. Athletes grow older, lose their prowess and are replaced by others who may be better or worse, with different drives and agendas. That was part of Torre's downfall. In his first few seasons, he was surrounded by the likes of Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and others who meshed so well together, working for that common goal. But the ones who followed seemed less interested in the Yankee tradition and more in individual performances. Some --- like David Wells, Kyle Farnsworth, Carl Pavano and Kevin Brown, to name a few --- were a constant source of disappointment. The Yankees kept winning, but the spark and joy were missing.
Working for Steinbrenner and his minions presented its own set of difficulties, constant scrutiny and job security being two of them. Despite 13 consecutive postseason appearances, someone was always looking over Torre's shoulder, quick to criticize if some bit of strategy backfired or if things weren't running smoothly. After an initial euphoria, the tone of THE YANKEE YEARS becomes more forlorn with every chapter. Baseball fans know the inevitable outcome --- Torre was not retained following the 2007 season and was named manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers (which he led to the postseason) --- but Verducci hammers the point home with passages such as "It was the 1,294th win with the Yankees for Torre, including postseason play, over 12 seasons. It would be the last," and "He showered, dressed and left his office and the clubhouse believing this would be the final time he would do so as manager of the New York Yankees. He did not look back." It is telling that the book jacket features a picture of Torre walking away from the camera.
The pre-publication hullabaloo over THE YANKEE YEARS, Joe Torre's "autobiography/memoirs," can be summed up with a Shakespeare title: Much Ado About Nothing. Like the trailer of a two-star movie, the media --- many members of which admitted not to have read the book in its entirety as they made their comments --- cherry-picked parts for maximum bang. In particular, they focused on Torre's remarks about Alex Rodriguez, whom he characterized as high-maintenance, more concerned with how he looked and performed than with his contributions to the team's success. They failed to mention that Torre also praises Rodriguez: "Nobody has ever worked harder in my memory than this guy," he writes.
Torre also expresses disappointment in his deteriorating relationship with Brian Cashman, the Yankees general manager, whom he accuses of not supporting him when the chips were down.
Taken as a whole, THE YANKEE YEARS is a standard bit of baseball memoir, no worse and perhaps better than others that have been published in recent years. Too bad it couldn't have had a happier ending.
--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
Book Review: A wee bit disappointed....
Summary: 3 Stars
As a die hard Yankee fan, I was waiting to read this book with much anticipation and unfortunately I was a little let down. The beginning of the book seemed to read different than certain other times during the read. I was not able to understand who's Point of View the chapter was coming from, particulary the Steriod conversation. I found myself wondering who was acutally speaking and or thinking within the paragraphs.
I enjoyed the storyline and his absolute admiration for Jeter definately shows through. A good read, although I'm not sure if I learned much than alot of things that had already been reported in other media outlets.