Warm Welcome in Los Angeles Helps Torre Keep New York in the Past

Joe Torre got a hug from Sandy Koufax before Monday’s game against the Giants. Torre said he was glad to be away from the pressures of New York.

By BILLY WITZ

Published: April 1, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Joe Torre had barely nestled into his new perch, the top railing of the third-base dugout at Dodger Stadium, when Dave Roberts singled and took off for second base.

If Torre had any flashbacks, to 2003 when Roberts’s ninth-inning steal of second base started the Red Sox on their trip back from a three games-to-none deficit in the American League Championship Series, it lasted only an instant or as long as it took Dodgers catcher Russell Martin to fire a strike to second baseman Jeff Kent, who tagged out Roberts.

From start to finish, Torre’s debut as Dodgers manager was as picture perfect as the weather on a sun-kissed Monday afternoon, his new team welcoming him with a 5-0 win over the Barry Bonds-less and punchless Giants before a sellout crowd of 56,000.

Kent belted a two-run homer in the first inning, Brad Penny pitched a flawless six and two-thirds innings and Rafael Furcal did a fair Derek Jeter impression with his bat and his glove, collecting three hits and doing a 360-degree pirouette on a grounder up the middle.

Still, the 67-year-old Torre, who won four World Series titles with the Yankees over the last 12 seasons, was as anxious as third baseman Blake DeWitt, who made his major league debut.

“I was nervous,” Torre said after leaving the field to the strains of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” “We got three in the first and you want to score in every inning and make it as easy as possible.”

Whether it was a winter of rejuvenation or his exit from New York, Torre looked far from the beleaguered figure of last fall. Or someone who’d barely slept Sunday night. His sunken eyes were masked by dark sunglasses instead of dark circles. The deep lines in his face appeared softened by a rich tan.

If his looks hinted that he was happy to be out of New York, his words only reinforced the suggestion.

Torre said he exchanged good luck phone calls and text messages Sunday and Monday with Jeter, Jorge Posada, the new Yankees manager Joe Girardi and members of the Yankees’ training staff. But that was where his nostalgia ended.

“Opening day in that situation I was in I wouldn’t look forward to it,” Torre said of New York. “I had a wonderful time there and a great deal of success.

“Professionally, I played for 16 years and I don’t think I enjoyed or had as much satisfaction as I did in the time there. But I knew I had run up against it at that point. It just wasn’t a whole lot of fun.”

In Los Angeles, Torre was sought to restore credibility to an organization that had gone through three general managers and three managers in the four years since Frank McCourt bought the club. The Dodgers have won one playoff game since their 1988 World Series title, but Torre said they were the one club other than the Yankees that could lean on its history.

They have done so to begin their 50th year in Los Angeles. They played an exhibition Saturday at their first home here, drawing 115,300 to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. And before Monday’s game they introduced several former Dodgers, including Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela, Maury Wills and Steve Garvey.

“I had goose bumps seeing all those guys from the past,” said Matt Kemp, the Dodgers’ 23-year-old right fielder.

It is youthful talent like Kemp, the No. 3 hitter; the 25-year-old All-Star catcher Russell Martin; 23-year-old first baseman James Loney; and 23-year-old pitchers Chad Billingsley and Jonathan Broxton that has Torre enthused. “Young players bring energy,” Torre said.

Torre’s presence had been felt during spring training in a clubhouse that ended last season in turmoil, when prospects and veterans bickered as the Dodgers collapsed down the stretch. The manager at the time, Grady Little, appeared to do little to address the rift until it was too late.

“Intensity, the no-excuses attitude,” said left fielder Andre Ethier, when asked what qualities Torre brought with him. Then he considered another — credibility.

“Everything happened in New York during his tenure,” Ethier said. “So when he says something, it’s not one of those things where you might blow it off and say ‘whatever.’ Every one of his words holds value.”

Missing Monday, for Dodgers fans, was their favorite villain, Barry Bonds. This season is the first since 1992 that Bonds is not with the Giants. Gone is the media circus, the specter of Balco-related perjury charges and Bonds’s recliner in the Giants’ clubhouse. In their place is a giant-sized hole in the lineup.

The Giants managed just five hits, all of them singles.

“It’s a different game,” Penny said of the Giants’ lineup, which now has Bengie Molina as its cleanup hitter. “It changes the game plan for pitchers. In meetings we have now, it’s not don’t let Barry beat you.”

When Torre returned to his office, there was a note from an old friend, Billy Crystal.

He said he planned to have dinner with the 18 members of his family who were in attendance. They might share a toast, but Torre reminded that it was not yet April, so it was not likely to be Champagne.

“We don’t like to do that stuff until October,” he said.

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/sports/baseball/01dodgers.html?ref=baseball