"The Yankee Years," by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (2009)

An enjoyable read and a helpful, accurate primer on the Joe Torre era for those who missed it or simply want a refresher. It gets points for eliciting pretty candid opinions from former Yankees such as David Cone and Mike Mussina, and it also does an effective enough job providing context for the Yankees' inexorable slide toward...well, not mediocrity, per se, but not championship-level baseball, either. It loses points for its somewhat repetitious prose, and including a few too many self-sati...more "The Yankee Years" is an enjoyable read and a helpful, accurate primer on the Joe Torre era for those who missed it or need a refresher. If you're reading it simply for the Alex Rodriguez bashing, it's not really that vicious -- and besides, A-Fraud has slightly bigger problems to deal with these days.

It gets points for eliciting pretty candid opinions from former Yankees such as David Cone and Mike Mussina, and it also does an effective enough job providing context for the Yankees' inexorable slide toward...well, not mediocrity, per se, but certainly disharmony. Along the way, there are juicy tidbits even day-in, day-out Yankee fans like me hadn't heard. My favorite: head scouts from the 2000 title team still haven't received their World Series rings for reasons only George Steinbrenner knows, but among those who did receive them were Steinbrenner sycophants Billy Crystal and the opera singer who does 5-minute renditions of "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch of playoff games. Priceless.

The book loses points for its somewhat repetitious and overstuffed prose, and for including a few too many self-satisfying quotes from other people extolling Torre's virtues (of which there are many, but still: The book details a team meeting in 2007 where coach Larry Bowa chews out the players and tells them that Torre is a "once-in-a-lifetime" manager. I'd much rather have heard what Torre said in that same meeting). I also am not sure why Torre's contributions to the book warrant co-author credit (besides the obvious financial reason) -- Torre's voice is not heard for large chunks of some chapters.

All in all, though, a worthwhile read, and not half as salacious as the headlines would suggest.