Joe Torre appeared on Bob Costas’ HBO show last night and talked in more detail about his final days with the Yankees:
Joe Torre Tuesday night did his first one-on-one television interview since parting with the Yankees, talking with Bob Costas on HBO’s “Real Sports” hosted by Bryant Gumbel. Torre said flat out what he had hinted at last week, that a two-year contract would have convinced him to return as manager, even for the same money per year he was offered, which would have been a pay cut.
Asked by Costas what killed the deal, Torre said: “Really the thing that didn’t make it work for me was the fact that [it was] one year.”
Costas asked Torre if he could have accepted a guaranteed two-year contract with the same salary and incentive structure that he turned down, even though he found the incentives “insulting.” That structure was a base salary of $5 million, with $1-million incentives for each round of playoffs reached. Torre earned $7.5 million in 2007.
Torre replied: “You know, I probably could have worked with that, knowing that the two years was more important to me. To me, I just felt going through the year without having the disturbance of, of your job’s at stake. The term was much more important to me than the amount.”
Torre also clarified that when he called the offer “insulting,” he was referring to the incentives to advance in the playoffs. He felt that indicated the Yankees believed he would change his decision-making in the playoffs with a bonus on the line.
That isn’t all that surprising since the Yankee front office seems to be dominated by people who think that there isn’t any problem that can’t be answered by money, and that people are motivated to win not because they want to succeed, but because you throw money in their lap.
