#15 JOE TORRE
Catcher
What came before: The Braves arrived in Atlanta with the undisputed best catcher in the National League holding down that position. Torre, who took control of the job in 1961 at the age of 20 (finishing second to Billy Williams as Rookie of the Year), was an all-star in 1964-65 – leading the league in defensive percentage both years – and had an almost unheard-of 193 hits in '64 while catching exclusively. Those hits produced 109 RBIs and he struck out only 67 times while batting .321. The dropoff in '65 wasn't huge: 27-80-.291 and his durability was unquestioned.
That 1966 season: Torre was who fans hoped he'd be. He batted a solid .315 with 36 homers and 101 RBIs while catching in 148 games. But that would be Torre's last hurrah as a top-shelf catcher.
What happened next: His average dropped to .271 and his RBIs fell to an alarming 68 in 1967, but he was still the NL all-star starting catcher – his fifth straight all-star selection. The RBIs dwindled further to 55 in '68, but he was still the top defensive catcher in the league. But to the Braves, he was about done as a catcher. But to the St.Louis Cardinals, he was a first baseman waiting to happen. So St. Louis sent former MVP Orlando Cepeda and his bad knee to the Braves for Torre and had him toss away the tools of ignorance for good. As first baseman, his legs returned to him and he broke through to have his first 200-hit season in 1970 and followed that up with the MVP Award in 1971 as he batted an impressive .363 with 137 RBIs.
Torre and the Cardinals parted ways after the 1974 season and three more season of hitting .280 or more, and spent the next two seasons as a player-coach for the Mets. That led to his becoming a player-manager in 1977 and the rest, as they say, is history.
Torre was nothing special helming the Mets – the timeless headline was “Clueless Joe” – was fired in 1981 and hired by the Braves in 1982, just time to take the Braves to a 13-0 start and a division title. Three years helming the Braves led him to being fired by Ted Turner with the embarrassing pronouncement that Torre was the top candidate for the job were he not the one being fired. He returned to St. Louis but could not find the magic there, either, never doing better than second.
But there was one other team who thought he could do the job – his hometown Yankees. In 1996, less than a year after being canned by the Cardinals, Torre donned the pinstripes for the first time and owner George Steinbrenner looked like a genius.
That first year, 1996, Torre led the Yankees to a World Series win over the Braves, and would earn championship trophies for The Boss in 1998, 1999 and 2000 and added AL championships in 2001 and 2003. But nothing lasts forever, so Torre left the Yankees after 94 wins and a second-place finish and joined the Los Angeles Dodgers. He won two divisional titles in three seasons, but the West Coast was not for him. He hung up the cleats for good after the 2010 season at age 69 to go to work for the Commissioner's Office.
He was named to the Hall of Fame in 2014 as a manager with a career record of 2,326 wins and 1,997 losses in 29 years, including six pennants and four World Series trophies.
Next Up: Charlie Vaughan
Originally Posted by rico43
