With tan but no pinstripes, Torre returns to New York

Joe Torre made it home - just long enough to get his daughter to school, pick up his car keys and drive to Shea Stadium.

He didn't drive past Yankee Stadium, taking the Whitestone Bridge instead of the Triborough on an unusually sunny Thursday afternoon.

"Not purposely. That's the quickest way here from my house," he said.

Still, Torre's former baseball home is never too far from his mind. When Derek Jeter was hit on a hand by a pitch from Daniel Cabrera on May 20, Torre was watching on television at Dodger Stadium. He picked up the phone and immediately telephoned his old clubhouse back in the Bronx.

"It sounded ugly," said Mr. T, as Jeter refers to him. "I called the training room just to see how he was. He got on the phone and said he was OK."

He also called "Joey" - new Yankees manager Joe Girardi - after New York's first trip to Boston.

"I just wanted to get his firsthand opinion of that nice experience up in Fenway," Torre said with a twinkle of mischievousness.

Torre looked tan and relaxed before his first game back in New York since resigning as manager of the Yankees last October following 12 stunningly successful seasons, four ending in World Series titles. The Dodgers plane landed at 4 a.m. after a game in Chicago, so the new LA skipper went to the team hotel in Manhattan, then got up early to head home to suburban Westchester.

At 4 p.m., he walked into the visiting clubhouse, older brother Frank right along with him. A short while later, Yankees clubhouse manager Lou Cucuzza Jr. came in to greet his former boss. Anything with the Yankees gives Torre the warm fuzzies.

When Torre made his first on-field appearance during the Dodgers' 8-4 loss, for a seventh-inning pitching change, he was greeted by a standing ovation mixed with some boos and cameras flashing. Torre, who began his managing career with the Mets in 1977, waved and doffed his cap when he returned to the third-base dugout.

"It was unexpected and appreciated," Torre said. "That made me feel good."

There were so many triumphs across town on baseball's most glamorous team, with Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York" as 56,000 fans cheered like thunder and the big ballpark shook as if a quake had struck.

Out in laid-back Los Angeles, life is different. He took the old manager's office, where Walter Alston's painted over name is still visible. Asked to list some controversies from the past three months, he couldn't come up with any - well, there was Juan Pierre griping over playing time in spring training.

Torre said the media out in LA doesn't whip up every little thing into a breathless, front-page headline.

"Baseball is strictly in the sports section there, which is a little different than here. It's nice," Torre said. "I don't think at this point in time I've been asked to explain as much as you had to explain here on a daily basis."

In New York, photographers camped out around his house in Harrison. In LA, they're too busy with Britney, Ashlee and Lindsay to stake out Torre, who didn't like the constant glare of off-the-field attention.

"The only nice memory I had of that one was when I was working out in the back of my house and I saw my dog chasing this photographer," he said.

The absence of sensationalism became clear to him after a spring training game against Boston.

"It was awfully nice in California when we played the Red Sox, and we hit Manny Ramirez and nobody wrote about it the next day," he said.

Torre has no regrets that he walked the pinstriped plank before he was pushed. When the Steinbrenners offered only a one-year contract after last year's playoff elimination, he understood the message as clearly as did the Corleones when they received Luca Brasi's vest wrapped around a dead fish.

"It was time to move, and I'm glad I made the decision. Not for any other reason than I'm more comfortable where I am," he said. "Sometimes you have to do things that you feel are the right things to do even though it's uncomfortable to do it. I knew the last couple years there were just so uncomfortable, that I just knew it wasn't the right thing."

He's even happy that he wasn't invited to be a coach on the NL All-Star team for this summer's game at Yankee Stadium, scheduled for the wrecking ball after this year.

"I think I'd just serve more as a distraction than anything else," Torre said.

Perhaps he'll return if the Yankees hold a closing ceremony in November.

For now, though, he was looking forward to managing against the Mets' Willie Randolph, his former coach. Randolph has been criticized for a slow start following last year's epic collapse, and Torre feels for his friend.

Having the guillotine waiting nearby is a position Torre knows all too well.

"I'm glad my time has come and gone in that area as far, you know, the high-wire act all the time," Torre related. "What do they say? It helps you if it doesn't kill you."

Had he been sitting at home in retirement, spending days on golf courses, he would be rumored as Randolph's possible successor on a daily basis. That would have been uncomfortable.

And it would have pointed out the fickleness of commentators in the tabloids and on sports radio.

"I've always been fascinated," he said, "when they want you out, and all of a sudden when you're out they want you in."

As his 68th birthday draws near, Torre seems content. He doesn't miss New York, and yet he does.

"It's a great experience," he said. "Sinatra had it right."