Originally Published in Dodger Magazine, April 2008

“Milwaukee first baseman Joe Torre is a blue-bearded hombre who looks like the villain in a Popeye cartoon.” – Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray, in 1965. Murray is a member of the writer’s wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In those strong and young days, Joe Torre was the teenager on a team with Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Joe Adcock. When he arrived in the Major Leagues in September, 1960, the Milwaukee Braves were three years removed from toppling the New York Yankees in the World Series. Torre was the kid brother on a team that didn’t need anybody to tell it who it was.

Aaron was his own person. Adcock lived to scare pitchers. Mathews liked to bench jockey. Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette were the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis of the National League, guys who couldn’t be managed if you tried. Burdette once rented a helicopter and a pilot so he and Spahn could take a joyride over the Hollywood sign before a night game at Dodger Stadium. The players laughed. The manager didn’t. And if you listen closely to the oral history of the game, tales of Burdette’s antics are still easy to come by.

Torre’s baseball legacy is now lined in pinstripes, and it’s easy to forget that he was once a guy who wouldn’t miss a fastball. These were the times in which Torre began his baseball career. He was once one of the best hitters in the National League, carrying a powerful bat at a premium position. Torre had the darkened look of a brooding Brooklyn kid, which as Murray noted with his Irish wit, complemented his Italian physique. The son of Giant fans, he never played in Brooklyn, almost became a Dodger in 1968, and had to wait many years to wear blue. If you look closely at those days when he looked like the bad guy in a comic strip, Torre’s path becomes clear, as if somehow, he was always going to wind up with his borough’s bloodlines written across his chest.

“Growing up in Brooklyn, I might as well get this out real quick,” Torre said. “I was a Giants fan. I want to apologize for that right now.”

He was raised in Brooklyn, yes, but Torre really grew up in the big leagues. He arrived in the Major Leagues on Sep. 25, 1960 as a 19-year old. He pinch-hit for Warren Spahn and singled in the eighth inning against Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix. In a sign of things to come, he was immediately removed for a pinch-runner.

In another sign of things to come, Torre was in the middle of a victory. His run was the first of two runs that sent the game to extra innings, where the Braves, as they often did, found a way to win.

Back then, Torre didn’t look the part. There was no stoic, experienced look. He sometimes lost his temper, and once, was suspended for pounding the ball into the dirt after he disputed a call at first base. When he first arrived in Milwaukee, he was simply a scared kid trying not to embarrass himself, but talent is the great equalizer.

“My legs were shaking,” Torre remembered. “The first pitch was a fastball and I said, ‘I could hit that.’ The second pitch was a fastball. I got a base hit up the middle, and by the time I got to first base, my legs were really shaking.”

That was the start of a Hall of Fame baseball career.

Almost a year later, on August 12, 1961, Torre caught Spahn’s 300th victory, a tense 2-1 triumph over the Chicago Cubs in Milwaukee. Mathews threw away a routine ground ball at first base with two out in the ninth. Then Spahn, who knew how to break a hitter’s stride with an assortment of screwballs, sliders, and slushy change-ups, finished off the victory. Spahn gave Torre the glove that he wore. It broke his heart, when, years later, the gove Spahn gave him was stolen. At least Torre still remembers the party Spahn threw. (Or was it Burdette that threw the party?)

“Spahnie, we celebrated, and he had a party for everybody at a restaurant near the ballpark. It was memorable. I was a rookie and yet I felt close to those guys. During my brother’s tenure there, I got to know them all. Burdette and Spahn and Mathews and Aaron, I was basically their kid brother because of the way they treated me as a teenager.”

Torre matured from a shaky-kneed teenager to a cocksure hitter, who, in his mid 20s, grew into the imposing figure Murray envisioned. Twice he drove in 100 runs with the Braves, who moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta to begin the 1966 season. Five of his nine All-Star appearances were achieved with the Braves, including five consecutive years, 1963-1967, each as a catcher. To keep his bat in the lineup, he often played first base. He hit a career-high 36 home runs in 1966 at the age of 25, batted .321 in 1963, and drove in 109 runs in 1964. After the 1967 season, Torre, then 27, wanted more.

The General Manager of the Atlanta Braves at the time was Paul Richards, a tough-talking Texan with little patience for players who had the audacity not to report to Spring Training. Richard’s reputation was well deserved inside the game. A player who challenged him often became expendable. Before free agency, Torre – later an activist for Marvin Miller and the fledging Player’s Union – took a stand, and Richards told him where he could take his bags.

The Dodgers tried to make a move. In December 1968, the team reportedly offered center fielder Willie Davis and pitcher Tom Haller for Torre and outfielder Felipe Alou. The Braves liked the idea of Davis, but tried to keep Alou, offering outfielder Rico Carty instead. The Dodgers pulled back, and instead of coming to Los Angeles for the 1969 season, the club would have to wait until hiring him as manager to begin the 2008 season.

The money Torre was looking for, $65,000, sounds like loose change compared to modern salaries, but Torre took his stand. When Richards believed Torre had become less efficient lineup protection for Aaron in 1967 and 1968 and claimed he couldn’t stay healthy, Torre demanded an apology.

Richards would have sooner paid Torre with Texas dirt.

The divorce was imminent. Richards heard offers, including an interesting overture from the New York Mets comprised of three position players and an erratic right-handed pitcher, Nolan Ryan, who could throw a ball through a brick wall, if only he could find the wall in the first place.

Richards made sure Torre found his way to St. Louis, trading him to the Cardinals for Orlando Cepeda. It became one of the best things to happen to him.

When Torre walked into the Cardinals clubhouse, he was surrounded by veterans who expected to win. The Cardinals had beaten the Red Sox in the 1967 World Series and lost to the Tigers in the 1968 World Series. Tim McCarver was entrenched behind the plate, so Torre moved to first base. The Cardinals were a serious bunch, an organization that developed so much of its own talent that it fed fear into its players to inspire performance. Only the solid veterans, no man less than 30 years old, understood what it meant to be a Cardinal at the Major League level. Lou Brock, Curt Flood and Vada Pinson were the outfielders. Torre joined a veteran infield of Mike Shannon, Dal Maxvill and Julian Javier. With the exception of McCarver, who was one year younger than Torre, he was the youngest regular in the Cardinals lineup.

Manager Red Schoendienst understood more about Torre than Torre did. Schoendienst played second base for the World Champion Milwaukee Braves in 1957. The catcher on that team had been Frank Torre, Joe’s older brother. Schoendienst and Torre crossed paths in 1960, when Torre came to the Braves for his first two Major League games. He had also managed against him since 1965, the year he took over the Cardinals.

There was never any question that Torre could hit, but Schoendienst challenged him to be better at everything. He demanded he take better care of his body, make better decisions, and place his team first. These are all characteristics that Torre retains today.

“When I was traded to St. Louis by Atlanta, I was 30 and fat,” Torre said later. “I didn’t want to be one of those guys who lost my mobility.”

Torre didn’t lose his mobility. He would soon become the player he wanted to be.

“Red probably made more of an impression on me because I think I was more of a man when I got there,” Torre said. “He basically treated you like a man. Go out there and play the game. He’s the guy I learned more from managing than anybody, and it was based on the fact that he played the game, and he never forgot what he thought he liked as a player.”

Torre, the player’s manager, was born.

Players listen to other players first, and it helped that Schoendienst had been an All-Star who played and managed his way to the Hall of Fame. He had a folksy touch but he meant business, and if you put a fungo bat in his hands and didn’t get down on ground balls, he’d cut you to pieces. If you crossed him, he had a long memory.

In a game he managed against the Dodgers in August, 1970, Dodger right-hander Don Sutton hit Cardinal outfielder Jose Cardenal. Later, he brushed back Maxvill. Disgusted, Schoendienst told his pitchers to wait for the perfect time. It arrived in Los Angeles twelve days later. In a pitching duel between Sutton and rookie left-hander Jerry Reuss, Schoendienst waited for Sutton to come to bat. Reuss threw a two-strike fastball behind Sutton’s head.

“If they brush us back, then they’re going to get it, too,” Schoendienst said.

The Cardinals won that Friday night pitching duel at Dodger Stadium. It was Torre, who had not hit a home run at Dodger Stadium in five years, who won the game with a home run in the top of the ninth to beat Sutton.

After the game, Torre remembered that he had not hit a home run at Dodger Stadium since taking Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax out in successive games with the Braves.

He still doesn’t take those shots for granted, especially those against Koufax, who he admits he rarely got to when it mattered. At least he’s not alone.

“He let you know he was out there,” Torre remembered.

Under Schoendienst, Torre let the rest of the National League know that he had, at last, become a complete hitter when in 1971, he won the National League’s Most Valuable Player award. It was a career year that allowed him to outdistance Willie Stargell, Hank Aaron and Bobby Bonds in the MVP voting. He hit .363 with 24 home runs, 137 RBIs and 230 hits. He lost 20 pounds before the season and raised his batting average 92 points. He moved to a new position, third base, and never hit lower than .324 in a month. After May 19, he never went more than one day without getting at least one hit.

Schoendienst’s influence, both as a player and manager, still resonate with Torre. “Red taught me that the game belongs to the players,” Torre said. “I still feel that way.”

When Torre was finished playing for the Cardinals, he became a player-manager for the Mets. His path was set, though he never anticipated that he would rise from a boy who collected paper photos of players from a vendor outside of Ebbets Field to the manager of the Dodgers. Too bad Murray isn’t around to see it. One thing you can say about his Torre phrasing: he got the part about blue right.