I am sitting down to write these words somewhere in the very wee hours of the morning on Tuesday, Feb. 3. "The Yankee Years," a 512-page hardcover bombshell of a book co-authored by Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci and former Yankees manager Joe Torre, has been available in bookstores worldwide for a matter of minutes. Needless to say, I haven't read it yet.
Neither have you.
That probably hasn't stopped you from forming an opinion on it. Right? I mean, we all know Torre's story. Came to the Bronx in 1996 inheriting a wild card-winning Yankees team. Immediately won the World Series. Stayed for 12 seasons, made the postseason all 12 times, piled up six American League pennants and four World Series titles along the way. Left after the 2007 season when the front office insulted him with an incentive-laden one-year contract offer. Moved out West and took over the Dodgers.
When you're talking about a man who spent 12 years juggling the egos of Alex Rodriguez, David Wells, Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi, Carl Pavano, Paul O'Neill, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens — just to name a few — you're inevitably going to have a bias in one direction or the other.
Pavano already released a statement, saying he is "extremely disappointed that someone I had a lot of respect for would make these types of comments." Wells scoffed at a reporter and said "I'd knock him out" when asked about Torre. Rodriguez dismissed the book's references to him — a friend told the New York Daily News that "he laughed at the stuff because he is so beyond all of that."
But none of these people have read the book either. They're basing their opinions off of conjecture, off of hearsay, off of little bits of short excerpts that have all been taken out of context. We know that the book contains a quote about how Wells can "make your life miserable" and that Rodriguez is at some point nicknamed "A-Fraud." We know very little, however, about how these quotes come up, why they are relevant or even when they are said.
This is the New York sports media at its worst. The cheap tabloids that spend 12 months a year scavenging for Yankees controversy hit the jackpot when "The Yankee Years" hit bookshelves, and they'd be foolish not to market the Torre/Wells/A-Rod clashing the way that they have. This is an industry where shock value, not actual substance, is what sells, so why bother waiting for the whole story?
The New York Daily News, when it ran an article on Sunday about the Torre fiasco, had a poll running alongside the online edition of its story. The question read simply, "Do you think this book tarnishes Joe Torre's Yankee legacy?" Fifty-one percent of readers checked off the "Yes, he should have kept quiet" option; 19 percent opted for the neutral, reasonable choice of "I'll have to read the book." This, to me, is a problem.
But then again, when has anyone ever cared about substance? After all, this is a book about baseball. There are plenty of precedents. "Moneyball" (2003) is a book about on-base percentage. Like it? Hate it? Just sound off. "Ball Four" (1970) is about drugs. Everyone has an opinion on drugs. Let's hear it.
When did this happen? When did sports media devolve to the point that everything can, and must, be reduced to a two-second sound bite? Is anyone else worried about this?
In an interview with SI.com, Verducci told the magazine that the book "frames the 1996-2007 Yankees around the macro issues and seismic changes in the game … the Steroid Era, expansion, contraction plans, competitive balance issues, the rise of information and statistical analysis, the change in ownership of the Boston Red Sox, biomechanics as the next possible market inefficiency ... Those and other issues all provide important context to the book. It's an historical account."
Now that sounds like a good book. Probably about 512 pages worth. I wouldn't want any less.
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Evans Clinchy is a senior majoring in English. He can be reached at Evans.Clinchy@tufts.edu.
