No matter how much Hank Steinbrenner complains — and makes himself sound like a clown, by the way — two things are destined to happen this year: the Yankees are missing the playoffs, and Joe Torre is still going to the playoffs. Torre, the manager of the Dodgers after being unceremoniously dumped by the Yankees, always struck us as a steady hand on a ship that could spring 500 leaks at any minute when he was in the Bronx. So many egos. So many agendas. He kept them in check, or at least mostly obscured. That was his job, and he was good at it. The Yankees haven’t won the World Series since 2000 — something attributable more to their increasingly flawed player acquisition blueprint than anything Torre was suddenly not doing. Long story short: Torre was definitely underrated during his time in New York, and the Yankees surely miss him. Did he have outrageous resources to work with? Absolutely. But he also delivered.

So: Who else makes the list of underrated managers/coaches?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.