The Rules Of The Baseball Clubhouse

The buzz right now in baseball is whether Joe Torre and his book, The Yankee Years, broke any rules.  Mind you, these alleged Rules aren't written down anywhere.  These are Rules that a ballplayer just knows, like not to date your best friend's ex-girlfriend and certainly not to date his sister.  Joe says he didn't cross the line and let us into the sanctum of the baseball clubhouse.  David Wells called him a "punk."  Who's right?  And who does this really affect?

To start, the Torre book, actually written by Sports Illustrated veteran Tom Verducci, isn't the first book written from the inside of the baseball locker room.  Anyone remember Jim Bouton's Ball Four?  Sparky Lyle's (with the great Peter Golenbock) The Bronx Zoo?  Even the man who calls others "punk," David Wells, wrote a book.  These are just a handful of examples.  So maybe one of the points is that it's Joe Torre who wrote the book; the man of steel nerves who guided the Yankees to four World Series titles in five seasons.  The man who stood up to George Steinbrenner for years.  The man whose image in baseball is like Abraham Lincoln or Harry Truman for presidents.  Maybe, just maybe, this book has brought Joe back down to earth.

Think about it.  Joe left the Yankees.  They didn't fire him.  Yes, their final contract offer to him left something to be desired, but lesser men would have taken the deal to remain with the Yankees.  I mean, these are The Yankees.  So Joe kept his dignity and we applauded him.

Then he goes to Los Angeles and ends up leading the Dodgers to the NLCS in his first season with the team, all while the Yankees don't make the playoffs for the first time since 1993 (1994's strike year doesn't count).  His sister is a nun.  His brother played in Major League Baseball and won the famous battle against a failing heart during the 1996 post-season.  He came from an abusive home to create the Safe At Home Foundation.  Joe Torre is a man who has carved out a baseball and personal legacy that, in the public's eye, is nearly unmatchable when it comes to character and longevity and grace.  These traits are hard to come by for anyone in the public spotlight these days.  Joe Torre owned the corner store.

Now he's under criticism.  From his former players.  From the Yankees, his former team (GM Brian Cashman's "No comment" isn't just a "No comment;" it's something you read into).  From different parts of the media.  Why?  For breaking The Big Baseball Rule: What goes on in the clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse.

It's interesting how this Rule is such a cliche now.  You hear it about Las Vegas.  You hear business people use it referring to their corporate travel.  You see it uttered in animated movies.  Does this make this Rule any less meaningful, the fact that it's been diluted by our culture? 

From a fan's standpoint, breaking The Rule is pure entertainment.  A fan wants to know all the dirty details of the A-Rod/Jeter relationship.  A fan wants to know what goes through the heads of teammates after their closer blows a big save, say in a Game 7 of the 2001 World Series or potentially clinching Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS.  Fans want to know everything they can about the players who play for the team they root for.  It's natural.  Because it's not their Rule.

A publisher certainly doesn't care about The Rules of the clubhouse.  Hold on.  Let's re-phrase.  A publisher knows about this Rule and wants its author(s) to break it.  Breaking rules leads to more publicity.  More publicity means more book sales.  Bigger sales means more money.  And, just like the baseball industry, the publishing industry wants to make as much money as it can.  There's not one thing wrong with this.

So the question remains: Is Joe Torre a "punk" for his involvement in The Yankee Years?  Did he, basically, talk behind the back of his former players?  Should they be mad at him?  Is Joe's image tarnished for  bowing to the pressure of today's American culture and putting out this type of book?  Are he and Verducci no better than Us Magazine or The National Enquirer, two other sources of gossip?  Is that all this book is, a source of gossip?

If you see the movie Doubt (I didn't see the Broadway play), there's a great scene where a priest, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, speaks at mass about Gossip.  He tells the story of a woman who visits him in confession and says she can't help spreading gossip.  Is this a sin?  The priest tells her to take all of her pillows at home, remove the feather stuffing in all of them, go outside and shake.  Then, he says, clean it up.  She says, But Father, there will be feathers everywhere.  How can I possibly clean it all up?  That, the priest says, is gossip.

None of what appears in Joe Torre & Tom Verducci's book is important to our lives.  We don't need to know how Alex Rodriguez's teammates may or may not feel about him.  We don't need to know all of the gory details about why Torre didn't take the contract offer from the Yankees after the 2007 season.  We don't need to know what Torre thinks of Kevin Brown and Carl Pavano.  None of this stuff will help us live our lives, get good-paying jobs, and feed our families.

But we can't help but want to know it.  And as long as there are publishers paying money and fans willing to buy and authors willing to write, the Rules of a baseball clubhouse are going to be broken.  If you're a player, your best bet is to keep your mouth shut and your focus on the field.  Otherwise you may end up becoming a helpless feather floating through the air, never to be the same again.