On Winning and Winning Again

By Joel Stein

Joe Torre, manager of the defending champion New York Yankees, has had to overcome bad teams, impossible owners and, earlier this year, a life-threatening illness to stay atop the baseball heap. Last week he had to deal with TIME's JOEL STEIN before taking on the Atlanta Braves:

Q: After cancer, you said games wouldn't seem so important. Has that been true?

A: I thought it was. But when you get in these games, you find there's a time or two you'd be willing to sell your soul for a victory. When it first got diagnosed, baseball was the furthest thing from my mind. When I did come back, I was able to put the game in perspective, that it is only a game. But later in the season, when you realized how important each win was, it didn't change from the past. It's the same hunger, the same passion, the same fire. And I'm happy about that.

Q: You've worked for George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner. Which is worse: mean or nuts?

A: To me, Ted Turner was worse, because I didn't have access to him. When I got fired by Ted, I had to arrange the meeting.

Q: Does this World Series determine the team of the '90s?

A: If we win, that means we won the World Series three times, more than any other team in this decade. But you don't try to win the World Series just so you're the team of the '90s. You try to win the World Series because that's what you're in it to do. When we look back on it, no doubt, it will mean something.

Q: With the wild card, the regular season doesn't matter anymore?

A: Now, unless you get to the World Series, a good year is completely obliterated. Two years from now, you ask who the hell was in post-season play, and nobody knows unless they were in the Series.

Q: Did you root for the Mets?

A: The Mets reminded me of the Boston Red Sox because they played on emotion; they didn't know how to quit. A Subway Series would have been absolutely nuts. The good part would have been being able to sleep in the same bed every night. The bad part would have been trying to get tickets to satisfy everyone. My wife is one of 16 children.

Q: You just read your new book last week, Joe Torre's Ground Rules for Winners [with Henry Dreher]. How was it?

A: This was an easier book to write than my autobiography. [Before I won a World Series] you had to find reasons why you were a winner, even though you never wore a World Series ring.

Q: Do New Yorkers like you because you win or because you take no quarter from George?

A: The fans gave me a chance because I'm from New York. I like to believe they respected me as a player because I gave them the best I could. And winning, for sure. And winning again.

Q: Even after managing in Atlanta, does that tomahawk chant make your skin crawl?

A: Yeah. I don't like it. It gets old. Thank goodness I can say it's not distracting. It's just, "Why?"

Q: Are you surprised that in the era of home runs, the two World Series teams are solid pitching teams?

A: When you see what happened in the All-Star game, when Pedro Martinez has Larry Walker, Sosa and McGwire... I'm not sure there was a foul ball among the three of them. When you have that kind of pitching, it's always going to stop good hitting. That's the intriguing thing about this Series.

Q: Why do baseball games take longer than a Ken Burns documentary?

A: I wish to hell I knew. We have a lot of pitchers out there who don't want the hitters to hit the ball, so it's ball one, ball two, strike one, ball three. Years ago, it used to be, "I dare you to hit it."