Joe Torre Owner

Joe Torre has been an All-Star player and a world champion manager, so why not go for it as an owner in the twilight of his baseball career?

There are worse front men to have in a group as it plots to convince the baseball world that it is the best buyer for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Torre is admired and respected on all fronts and he just stepped down from a year’s worth of working for Major League Baseball in order to pitch in on an effort to gain control of the Dodgers.

Torre won’t be the main financier, but is being strategically employed because of his good baseball name as one of the premier franchises in baseball changes hands. The team could sell for anywhere between $700 million and $1 billion, it is said.

It is interesting that the world of sports has evolved in such a manner that a former player can become an owner. We have seen Michael Jordan do it in the NBA with the Charlotte Bobcats and ex-Colt Jerry Richardson do it in the NFL with the Carolina Panthers. But way back before Marvin Miller and union representation when players were woefully underpaid, most players needed off-season jobs to support their families. Their dreams of becoming the big boss, the owner of the company, were about as realistic as the mail clerk’s in a New York financial office. (Oh, wait, wasn’t that a Michael J. Fox movie? Whatever.)

Times do change.

One management job a player could always aspire to was manager. Heck, 0nce upon a time there was even such a thing as a player-manager in baseball. Indeed, it was quite common up until the 1950s and the circumstance still occasionally popped up after that. When Frank Robinson became the first African-American manager for the Cleveland Indians he was still on the active roster. When Pete Rose made the shift from accumulating hits at a faster rate than anyone in history to the dugout, he still played for a while.

But player-owner? That’s a transition. Although always paid well compared to the average working population, baseball players made closer to the minimum wage than what those ranked on Forbes’ list of the richest men in America were hauling in. Now, with the minimum player salary at more than $414,000 a year, it doesn’t take long for every single baseball player to become a millionaire, at least on paper. Remember the recent NBA labor dispute was classified as an argument between the billionaires (owners) and the millionaires (players) with fans having no sympathy for either side.

The Dodgers are a plum property and it behooves Major League Baseball to have stable ownership in the vast LA metropolis. The team that once gave the world Jackie Robinson as a pioneer in social justice, that built the prototypical modern ballpark in Chavez Ravine, and provided Hall of Famers such as Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Duke Snider, has been at best one step ahead of comics’ punch lines recently. That was due to the Frank and Jamie McCourt family feud in divorce court that handicapped the team in seeking a National League pennant.

Torre was a nine-time All-Star with a lifetime .297 batting average as a catcher, first baseman and third baseman who won an NL batting title and an MVP award as a player, but gained greater fame in a lengthy managing career. Managing the Yankees, Torre won six American League pennants and four World Series titles. His last managing job was in LA, handling the Dodgers, where he built considerable goodwill betweem 2008 and 2010.

Torre is not the main moneybags in his group’s pitch. That seems to be a wealthy real estate developer named Rick Caruso. Theirs is far from the only bid, either. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban would like to get into baseball. Magic Johnson is tied to another group. So is former Dodger pitcher Orel Hershiser. There is a feeling Caruso did himself no harm by linking to Torre, who is perceived as a close personal friend of Commissioner Bud Selig. But it is Frank McCourt, not Selig, who is supposed to pick the winner, though the sport’s top authorities must approve the sale.

If the Torre group wins out, the smartest thing it can do afterwards is make sure Torre remains in the public eye. After the last couple of years of soap opera ownership, the Dodgers will take any good publicity they can get.