Editor's note: With the release of another Joe Torre/Tom Verducci book (The Yankee Years), I dug through my archives to pull out this review of their first tag-team effort. The review was written in the winter of 2006-07, which explains the reference to Torre still being the manager after an ALDS loss to the Detroit Tigers.
Title: Chasing the Dream:My Lifelong Journey to the World Series
Author: Joe Torre, with Tom Verducci
Pages: 272
Release date: 1997
Player Most Like: 1996 Bernie Williams
As the year winds to its conclusion, one of the strong themes that has developed in baseball literature is that of dealing with success. There are books about how the greats got there. There are books about how the spectacular failures came about, too. But what about the vessels built for success, the year after? No baseball team ever ends with a "happily ever after" (not since the Montreal Expos were eliminated from postseason contention, anyway).
Seth Mnookin's book Feeding the Monster examined this in great detail with the post-2004 Boston Red Sox. I live in the Chicagoland area, and the daily papers chronicled a Chicago White Sox team that just couldn't reach the same heights of the 2005 squad. And as a Cardinals fan, I know that someday soon I won't be able to refer to my team as the current world champions (like, say, 2010). What we know now informs how we look back at baseball events, many times adding particular meaning to fleeting success. In 1997, Joe Torre capitalized on the Yankees' first World Series championship since 1978 to write a book about his personal world championship triumph after years of quality play as a ballplayer and mediocre oversight as a manager.
We know, before even opening the book, that Torre went on to lead the 1998, 1999 and 2000 Yankees to world titles. We also know he's still the manager of the team - helming the league's richest roster through six straight years of making the playoffs and falling short. For a short time this offseason (although it feels like maybe 2004 with all that's happened), it seemed like his tenure in the Bronx was up. But he's still there, the bags under his eyes growing ever larger as he wonders how long Scott Proctor's magic arm can keep him from using The Farns another night.
And after reading Chasing the Dream, you really wonder if it's all worth it to Torre. "Storybook" endings sometimes are shoehorned into unworthy vessels, but with Torre's tale it truly fits. A New York boy emerges from his big league brother's shadow to become a hitting machine for the Braves and the Cardinals -- on teams that vary from mediocre to downright crappy. A natural manager, he jumps into jobs with the Mets and the Cardinals with little success. But he channels his know-how when confronted with the right situation (his first season with the Yankees) and helps create a winner. The book allows for some background into his family life, with a dad who wasn't there and a body not necessarily conducive to athletic activities. In some places, it actually gets a little uncomfortable reading Torre make fun of his young, fat self in the first person. But then there's a photo montage of Torre's always-awkward appearance and you can appreciate his self-depreciation.
Verducci, the main baseball writer for Sports Illustrated, gives Torre a concise, honest voice to tell his story. The book resists the urge to wallow in some of Torre's problems, but does address even his divorce in a confessional, direct way. Chasing the Dream reserves most of its focus, though, for his managerial exploits in 1996. In this way, the book is a time capsule of his decision-making in leading champions, not allowing for the haze of reminiscing to forget some of the small moves or make too big a deal of others.
In some alternate universe somewhere, maybe Torre and Verducci write a follow-up book, where moving Alex Rodriguez down in the batting order spurs on the Yankees to come back in the Division Series, dashes the A's hopes once again and eliminates a pesky Cardinals organization that dumped Torre in 1995. But one can't really sense the same passion from Torre, at least not after years of the baseball spotlight wearing him down. The book's greatest strength lies in explaining what it's like to win, and the immediate rush of joy and relief. This makes Chasing the Dream much more interesting than the usual quickie autobiography, in the sense that it makes you wonder: If the dream is realized, then what drives the man?
Posts
