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Torre faces adversity with a winning spirit

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — You like baseball stories? Frank Torre has plenty. You can't look 'em all up, but he swears they're true.

Like this one, about his little brother: "Joey used to hang up Stan Musial's jockstrap.''

That would be Joe Torre, nine-time All-Star, four-time World Series champion as manager of the New York Yankees, and one-time clubhouse boy.

Joe was 16 when he took his first plane trip from New York City to visit Frank, who in 1956 was a rookie first baseman for the Milwaukee Braves.

Frank introduced his kid brother to Braves' clubhouse manager Tommy Ferguson "and that was it.'' . . .

"I lost him for the whole trip,'' Frank said. "Tommy put him to work in the visiting clubhouse.''

Musial and the St. Louis Cardinals came through so Frank figures his little brother took good care of Stan the Man.

Get Frank Torre going and he starts spraying the stories like line-drive singles.

There's the two homers he hit to help the Braves win the 1957 Series, the bad blood between teammates Warren Spahn and Eddie Mathews, and the pre-dawn plunge into Lake Michigan to celebrate the championship.

"It sobered me up real good,'' Frank said.

The 75-year-old Palm Beach Gardens resident hopes to share the memories and laughs this summer when the 19 living players from that '57 team gather in Milwaukee to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their championship season.

But first, Torre needs to spark a rally of his own.

Last month, a few days after he received his invitation to the Braves' golden anniversary party, his doctors gave him a dire diagnosis: He'll need a new kidney some time over the next year.

Torre already has a new heart, and what a story that was. He underwent a successful heart transplant between Games 5 and 6 of the 1996 World Series, recovering quickly enough to watch Joe celebrate on television when the Yankees defeated the Atlanta Braves 3-2 in Game 6 to clinch Joe's first title.

Connected to tubes and wires, Torre remembers the Braves giving his new heart a kick-start by scoring a run in the ninth inning.

"My blood pressure, I could see on a machine right in the room, stayed at 100, until (relief pitcher John) Wetteland came in the ninth inning and it fluctuated,'' he said with a laugh, waving his hand in an upward motion.

Today, Frank Torre's problem is one often encountered by heart-transplant patients: The immunosuppressant drugs he has taken every day since October 26, 1996, to prevent his body from rejecting his new heart, are also "slowly poisoning the kidneys,'' said Dr. Mehmet Oz, who performed Torre's transplant at Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan.

"It's sad, but it's not unusual,'' Oz said. "The good part about this is he's 11 years out (from the heart transplant) and he hasn't had any major issues until now. The man should have been dead a decade ago.

"He is a very strong guy. He took tools that he learned as a player and he has applied them in his life as a patient. The same things that allowed him to focus on a 100-mph fastball are allowing him to cope with some of the things he's going to face in the kidney transplant and he has already coped with in his heart transplant.''

Torre and his five children are undergoing tests to see if any of them are a match. So far, there are indications his daughter Elizabeth might be a donor. If not, he'll go on a kidney transplant list.

"My heart is only 38 years old,'' he said with a laugh. "The problem is, my body's 75. I'll be the bionic man by the time they're done with me.''

Torre hopes to get his new kidney so he can keep a promise he made to three of his five grandchildren — that he'd take them to Milwaukee this summer.

Last week, Torre was saddened over news that an old teammate, Lew Burdette, who won three games in that '57 Series, died after a long battle with cancer.

"There aren't many of us left,'' Torre said. "That's why I'm going to try like hell to make this gathering in August.''

Joe Torre, 66, thinks his brother will do what he always does — beat the odds.

"Frank has a great will to live,'' Joe Torre said Tuesday as the Yankees opened spring training in Tampa. "And he's never been afraid of the other thing. Just hopefully, health-wise, he can handle it. Because right now he's in bonus time. He's 10 years on this heart, and it takes a toll on the rest of him, but he's not about to say, 'I've had enough of this' yet."

Still, Frank said he doesn't have the energy to get around as much as he used to. His big sister Rae is visiting from New York to help Frank at his home and to make their annual drive to Tampa next month to spend time with Joe.

But Torre doesn't seem to mind hanging out at home, where he can glance at walls in every direction and see photos that bring back the glory years.

There's Torre yukking it up after a game in 1957 with an aging Ty Cobb, who stopped by the Braves' clubhouse to visit his old Detroit Tigers teammate, Braves manager Fred Haney.

Just below that frame, there's a black-and-white newspaper photograph of Yankees right-fielder Hank Bauer looking up as Torre's home run in Game 6 clears the wall at Yankee Stadium.

"See that tall guy catching the ball?'' Torre said, pointing to a fan in the stands. "That's Bob Davies. He played in the NBA with the Rochester Royals. I ran into him years later and he gave me the ball.''

Torre wasn't a home-run hitter; he hit 13 in the seven years before he retired after the 1963 season to become a sporting goods salesman. But even though the Braves lost, he was especially proud of the Game 6 shot because his friends and family from the old neighborhood in Brooklyn were there cheering him on at Yankee Stadium.

"I gave my mother and sister tickets (behind home plate) but my mother gave hers to a priest,'' he said. "She sat in the upper deck, and when I hit the home run you can see (in the old movie reels) a hat fly out of the stands. That's my mother's. She lost her hat when she jumped out of her seat.''

Torre has an even better story about his mom. Before the Series began, she met the producers of the "Today Show" on her first airplane flight, from New York to Milwaukee.

"They fed her some champagne on the flight,'' Torre said. "She never drank and she was half in the bag. They take her at 6 in the morning to be on the 'Today Show.' They ask her who her favorite player is and she says, 'Gil Hodges.'''

You could take Margaret Torre out of Brooklyn, but you couldn't take her Dodgers and their first baseman out of her mind.

"You'd think she would say her own son,'' Frank Torre said, still shaking his head 50 years later. Then, he smiled.

"Those were good days.''

Joe Capozzi writes for the Palm Beach Post.