Tiki & Tierney were up in Westchester County Thursday at the prestigious Sleepy Hollow Country Club, broadcasting live from Joe Torre’s annual golf outing benefitting his Safe At Home Foundation.
And, the guys got to spend a few minutes with the host and his wife, Alice Torre, to discuss the Foundation, its genesis, and what it’s like to hang out and play with some past Yankees greats at the annual event.
Of course, they also had to ask Joe about the current squad, which was in Houston prepping to play a doubleheader right after the show…and the big topic was Aaron Judge and his contract situation.
“I don’t know how Aaron’s doing it, but he has a pretty good personality,” Torre said when asked what it was like to handle situations like Judge’s, “but every year, when I was there, somebody was there who wasn’t going to be there the following year. The way I used to say it was, ‘guys, we don’t know what’s going to happen next year. Let’s see how well we can do while we have it together, and hopefully it’s not a distraction.’ Obviously it doesn’t seem to be a distraction for Aaron Judge, but it’s a business.”
As Torre said, the fans don’t want to know about business, they want to watch Aaron Judge – but even as great as he’s been, how is it that Judge can compartmentalize his contract situation and perform the way he has?
Related
“It’s doing your job; it doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, but it’s part of it,” Torre said. “When I played we didn’t have free agency, but we still worried about our salaries.”
Torre then recalled a time he had to go down and visit Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in Tampa, needing to know that he was still wanted in New York – and also told the story of Hall of Famer Ted Simmons, who, in the era before free agency, tried to do something that thankfully, the Yankees didn’t have to worry about when it came to Judge’s late arbitration hearing this spring.
“Simmons was the first player who started the season without signing a contract, sometime in the mid-1970s, because Marvin Miller, who led the Players’ Association at the time, contended that if you went through a whole year without signing a contract, you’d be a free agent,” Torre said. “We held up a game in St. Louis; we had a 12 p.m. game in St. Louis, and we held it up while Gussie Busch came down and they got to terms with Ted Simmons. It goes from there to where we are now, but I’m not sure I could manage effectively today with all the distractions we have.”
Related
Torre doesn’t have to worry about that stress now that he has retired from Major League Baseball almost completely, now serving as a special assistant to commissioner Rob Manfred – and his wife is happy to have him home, as Joe has taken up a second love of baking!
And maybe prognosticating, as he was asked what he thought the Yankees might do at the trade deadline – and after saying “any time the Yankees get a chance to go out and get someone you can never be surprised,” he told a story of an old waiver claim back in 2000 that was a surprise to him.
“I came in the clubhouse one day when they could take the players off waivers, and all of a sudden I had Jose Canseco in the clubhouse,” Torre laughed. “I said what do I do with him? To Jose’s credit, I told him I’d get him as many at-bats as I could but he wasn’t going to play every day – but he was a great teammate, and never caused an issue. When we beat the Mets in the World Series, he was the first one out in the scrum.”
Follow WFAN's midday team on Twitter: @TikiandTierney, @TikiBarber, @BrandonTierney, and @TheHoffWFAN
Listen live to WFAN via:
Audacy App | Online Stream | Smart Speaker
Follow WFAN on Social Media:
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitch