Comparing Coaches Joe Torre & Billy Martin

Joe Torre grew up dreaming to one day win the World Series just like he watched his older brother Frank win it in the 1957 game for Milwaukee Braves. But as a seventeen year-old kid, he knew he was far from that dream. Joe was proud of his brother that he would go back to his friends bragging about how is brother was a World Series Champion and had the ring to prove it. Frank would always tease Joe by saying “I have two World Series rings. Where’s yours?” Joe could never say anything to that until his dream came true in 1996, thirty-nine years later.

As a major league player Torre went from being an MVP player to a part-time player through out the years of 1960-1977. In 1975, playing for the Mets, Torre knew it was all coming to an end, when he had the worst season on his career, batting .247. He started to think playing baseball was a job and not enjoying it anymore, like he once thought it

One thing as a manager you have to stay away from is letting the game get blown out of shape. In the second inning of Game 4, the score of the game was 6-0 and Torre knew if they lost this game it would be almost impossible to come back. “Let’s cut it in half right here. Take small bites. Do the little things to get one run at a time. Let’s put a little pressure on them,” Torre said to the team. He always seemed to have the right thing to say in any uncomfortable situation. Slowly but surely they were able to hold down the Braves and tie the game 6-6 in the eighth inning. During that game he thought to himself over and over again, “I always see good things happen to other people. Why can’t they happen to me now? I’ve waited so long for this. At this point everything is equal. Why not me?” But finally something did go his way, they ended up pulling it off and winning 8-6.

In 1980, Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday bought the Mets and hired Frank Cashen as General Manager, moving Torre down the line. Cashen thought that Torre was too much a “player’s manager.” But he was no more different with the World Champion Yankees than the last place Mets. In fact he was probably more of a player’s manager with the Yankees, he would always hang around the clubhouse before and after games.

How can a manager who was fired nine times and never stayed with a team for more than three consecutive seasons be a leadership model? Martin earns the distinction because of his exceptional leadership style; at once tough, demanding, empowering, and protective and his astounding turnaround record. In all of baseball history, Martin is the only manager to take two teams; the Texas Rangers and the Oakland A’s that had both lost more than 100 games in a season and have winning seasons the very next year. But he also encouraged them with the unity of purpose, aggressiveness, and confidence to win.

Coach Billy Martin’s remarkable leadership also known as "Billyball" was Martin’s swashbuckling, no-holds-barred brand of playing to win. Martin excelled at motivating the gifted, yet often difficult, professionals to create a team with the drive, guts, and focus to beat the competition. Some of his best qualities were getting all he could out of a player, such as; the importance of building confidence and self-esteem on an individual basis, while shaping and strengthening the entire team, the power of expecting the best from every player, and absorbing the blame from above for the team’s blunders, the payoff of pushing hard during the good times, and pulling back during a slump.

Shortly after, the Yankees signed Darryl Strawberry; he said to Torre, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” Joe replied, “I only judge people from the day that I meet them, and see how they play for me. I deal with effort. I know you can’t always perform like you want to, but you can always try.” July 28th the Yankees had a twelve game lead over the other teams. As of September 9th, they only led the league by two games, that’s when Torre called for another meeting in Tiger Stadium visiting clubhouse. Torre addressed to his team, “The only people we have are each other. Everybody is looking to place blame, and if you want to do that, go ahead. It’s there for you. Just be warned that you’re going to be inundated with people trying to find out reasons why you’re not winning and why your lead is cut. If you start pointing fingers, things are going to break down and get ugly. We don’t have any selfish players here. We’re going to get this done. Believe me, we’re going to win this.” Torre always gave his team confidence and didn’t want them to slack off and lose what they worked so hard for.

From 1980 to 1982, Billy brought his swashbuckling brand of baseball to his hometown Oakland A’s. Using every trick he had learned, he turned the team around, from a seventh place standing up to se

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