An All-Star as a player, Joe Torre is best known to most fans as manager of the New York Yankees. During his tenure in the dugout, the Yankees won four championships, six American League pennants and 10 American League East titles.

His Yankees teams made the playoffs every year he managed the club, from 1996 to 2007, while compiling a .605 winning percentage.

In 2014, the Baseball Hall of Fame chose Torre for induction. He now works for Major League Baseball as a special assistant to the president. He previously worked as MLB’s Chief Baseball Officer.

Joe Torre Early Life

A native New Yorker, Torre was born July 18, 1940, in Brooklyn. The youngest child of five, born to Italian immigrants, Torre played baseball in his youth at St. Francis Prep. Although he worked briefly at the American Stock Exchange after high school graduation, he soon followed his older brother, Frank, into baseball.

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Torre signed with the Milwaukee Braves. In his first season in the minors in 1960 with the Class C Eau Claire Braves, Torre hit .344. The big league club called him up for two games that season. He got one hit in two at-bats, one of them pinch hitting for the great Warren Spahn.

In 1961, he joined the big league roster for good.

Major League Playing Career

Torre played from 1961 to 1977, most of it with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals. He finished his career playing three seasons with the New York Mets.

The accolades piled up during his playing career. He hit .278 in his rookie campaign and finished second in Rookie of the Year balloting. He made the All-Star team nine times from 1963 to 1967 and 1970 to 1973. He was named National League MVP in 1971, and won the National League batting title that year. He won a Gold Glove as catcher in 1965.

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Torre understood the game inside and out. And he could hit. But while Torre proved memorable as a player, he never made a World Series. That would come later.

Major League Managing Career

Torre’s managing career is a study in perseverance. He started with the New York Mets, managing them from 1977 to 1981. The team never had a winning record. They fired him after the 1981 season.

Torre then moved to manage the Atlanta Braves from 1982 to 1984. The team had winning records in two of those years and made the National League Championship Series in 1982, but lost to the Cardinals. The Braves fired him at the end of the 1984 season.

Torre went into broadcasting, calling games for the California Angels for five seasons, but never gave up on his dream of managing a champion. In 1990, the Cardinals hired him as manager. He stayed through the 1995 season, but again was fired after the Cardinals failed to make the playoffs in any of the seasons Torre managed.

Torre As Yankees Manager

Then, fate came calling in the form of George Steinbrenner, who asked Torre to become manager of the Yankees. Torre accepted, and what followed is why Torre became a Hall of Famer and legend among Yankees fans.

The Yankees first won the World Series in 1996. Torre had played or managed a record 4,272 games without reaching the World Series. When he finally got there, he was 56 years old.

The Yankees won in 1996, beating Torre’s old team, the Braves. They then won three series in a row in 1998-2000, the last one against another one of Torre’s old teams, the Mets. He moved on to manage the Dodgers in 2007 and 2008, winning two more division titles.

After years of futility, Torre’s teams made the playoffs in 14 of his final 15 years as manager.

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Torre, who turned 80 in 2020, has worked in baseball’s front office for a decade since retirement. His name is synonymous with the dominating Yankees teams of the 1990s and early 2000s. After many years of trying, Torre found his ultimate success back where he started in New York City.