Joe Torre said today he was "closing the door on managing the Mets," squelching a firestorm he created earlier this week when he said there was “no question” he would take a call from Fred Wilpon to discuss the job.
“I’m closing the door on managing the Mets, and probably everybody else. I don’t want to mislead anybody,” Torre said. “I’ve known Fred Wilpon forever. But I’m not going to manage. Let’s put it that way. I won’t be managing the Mets, and I thought I made that clear yesterday - about taking a call, as opposed to looking for a job.”
Current Mets manager Jerry Manuel was stung by what he thought was Torre campaigning for his job. Torre apologized to Manuel for that.
“It certainly wasn’t my intention of doing that and making people believe that I wanted to manage the Mets,” Torre said. "I think people tend to forget that I spent 12 years with the Yankees and formed too good of a relationship with their fans to move across the water and all of a sudden make them mad at me,"
This is probably a good thing. I’m not sure the Mets wanted to be in the position of having to reject the popular 70-year-old Torre. They really need to start over, and the iconic ex-Yankee skipper might not be the right guy for that job.