Joe Torre

The listed authorship of this book is deceptive, as it gives the impression that this is an "as told to memoir." But the book is all written in the third person, clearly by Verducci, not Torre, as a history of those years that Joe Torre managed the Yankees. Obviously, Verducci spent many hours interviewing Torre for this (as well as many other sources), as the book heavily relies upon quotes from Torre and on Torre's memories of events. My guess is that Torre included his name as co-author show more in order to avow his support for and approval of the contents of the book. Or maybe it was a marketing decision. Or maybe both.

At any rate, this is an excellent, excellent baseball history, and not just for Yankee fans. Verducci does a great job of describing the in and outs, the personalities, the drama and melodrama, of the 12 seasons that Joe Torre managed the Yankees, including the incredible run of championships at the beginning of Torre's tenure. But Verducci also does a great job of placing all those events within the context of the developments going on in and around the Yankees in the world of major league baseball in general. Both the steroid situation and the changes in scouting and player appraisal heralded by the arrival of the "Moneyball" philosphy are covered well, for example.

This is a smart, well-written, in-depth book, of interest to all baseball fans, I would think, not just for Yankee fans. show less

Disappointing. I read this book not because of the headlines, but because of good reviews in the book review sections of some newspapers, and because I thought the insights of Torre about his years managing the Yankees would be interesting. However, that is not this book. This is a poorly written and strangely focussed book about what we already know about those years, with occasional insights from Torre, David Cone , Mike Mussina and a couple of others. The end of the book does focus on show more Torre's disintegrating relationship with the Yankee brass, but the rest is the standard "Torre gave a pep talk and then the team reeled off ten wins" superficial reporting.

Here is an example of Verducci's prose style: "Game 7 flips baseball inside out, replacing near-endless opportunity with urgency. Injected with a heavy dose of finality, baseball in a Game 7 scenario is thrillingly different."

Be my guest.

(I should add that my opinion is not universally held. The book was well-reviewed by book critics (not in the sports section) of the NY Times, the LA Times and by Roger Angell in The New Yorker. So perhaps it caught me in the wrong mood. But I found the prose clunky, the bulk of the story familiar to any baseball fan, and the book weakened by big doses of Yankee exceptionalism.) show less

This is so much more than the payback, tell-all book of the press reports. Sure, there's the revelation that Roger Clemens had trainers rub hot liniment on his testicles before heading out to pitch, and more, but there is also informed discussion of the character of the Yankees over time and how it changed, the bio-mechanics of pitching, and more. I am fascinated. most of all, this is a history and discussion of how change came to baseball, seen from Torre's perspective. The changes include show more sabermetrics, revenue-sharing and the advent of Bud Selig. show less

Very well written, not surprisingly... Verducci is the best baseball writer around (not including the Baseball Prospectus/Seamhead types... that's a different kind of writing).

Not nearly as controversial as the trailers would have had you believe, but there are enough cringe-inducing private clubhouse moments to ask yourself why Joe found in necessary to write this book.