“Joe Torre: Safe at Home”
Dateline NBC: November 9, 2003
Yankees' manager Joe Torre talks about how
Basic seminar was the turning point in his life.
Nov. 9 — "Safe at home." There are no sweeter words in baseball, if your team’s trying to score. But those words have another meaning for this man. Even if you don’t follow baseball, you know Joe Torre. As manager of the New York Yankees, he is the very image of calm — no matter how tense things get in the game. But don’t let that image fool you. Despite all his success, Torre has struggled all his life, lacking something he seems to exude: confidence. For the first time on television, Joe Torre reveals a painful family secret and talks candidly about the fear he lived with as a child, how it affected him, and what it took for him to feel "safe at home."
Stone Phillips: “You hid it for a long
time.”
Joe Torre: “I did.”
Phillips: “And didn’t talk about it.”
Joe Torre: “Didn’t talk about it. Didn’t understand it.”
Phillips: “It’s not comfortable to talk
about it, is
it?”
Joe Torre: “No, it’s not comfortable. But here I am a successful
person
and I need to let people know that, you now, it doesn’t always have to
be a
dark hole out there.”
The
World
Series. Manager
Joe Torre has brought his New York Yankees there six out of the last
eight
years, and won four titles, a remarkable feat.”
Joe Torre: “Getting here is so tough.”
Tough for a team, and even tougher for this manager when you find out what he’s had to overcome.”
Joe Torre: “I did grow up as a nervous child. And I didn’t understand, for the longest time why that was.”
Joe was the baby of the family, eight years younger than his closest
sibling,
and spoiled, he says, by his mother and four brothers and sisters. His
father
was a New York City Detective. And by all outward appearances the Torre
home in
middle class Brooklyn seemed typical.
Joe Torre: “I felt there was a lot of love in my house. And my
mom was
you know the basis of all that.”
But that house was
also
filled with terror. Joe’s father kept them all in a constant state of
fear. His
violent attacks on their mother and humiliating verbal assaults on his
children
were a regular occurrence.
Joe Torre: “When he was home, it was like walking on eggshells for us all the time. I remember coming home from school — and if I saw his car out front, I’d find something else to do.”
Phillips: “To avoid going in the house?”
Joe Torre: “To avoid going in the house. He never hit me, but
I’m not
sure what’s worse now. You know, getting hit or being afraid of getting
hit.”
Phillips: “What scared you most?”
Joe Torre: “Well, I thought that something was going to happen
to my
mom. When he was yelling at my mom, it was sort of, you cringe because
you
didn’t know what was going to happen. I sort of went in a shell,
Obviously I
wasn’t protective. I wanted to be but I was too frightened to be.”
Rae Torre: “Many times I was afraid. Many times he said he was
going to
kill me in bed.”
Joe’s sister Rae,
brother
Frank, and sister Marguerite, a nun, all remember feeling helpless when
they
saw their father attack their mother — or heard about it later.
Marguerite Torre: “My mother had told me
that my father was
banging her
head against the kitchen wall and threatening to kill her.”
They have never spoken about their father’s abuse publicly, until now. One of Frank’s earliest memories dates back to when their mother was pregnant with Joe. Their father didn’t want any more children.
Frank Torre: “I witnessed as a little child
her being
thrown down
the stairs when my father was angry over finding out that she was
pregnant.”
Phillips: “He threw her down the staircase?”
Frank Torre: “I can close my eyes right now and remember the
scene.”
Rae says even the
slightest
thing would set their father off.
Rae Torre: “For something you might have
done wrong,
you know,
which you don’t even remember. Slamming the door or not having
something ready
for him to eat.”
Frank Torre: “One particular case, I hear this big slam in the
kitchen,
and what happened, my mother had cooked him eggs. And they weren’t
exactly the
way he liked them. So he had taken the plate and he threw it up against
the
wall, eggs and all. He had a knife in his hand and he said, ‘If you
ever make
the eggs again like that, I’ll kill you with this knife.’”
When Frank left
home to play
minor league baseball, the abuse grew worse. Joe remembers, at age 9,
mustering
his courage to diffuse an especially dangerous situation as Rae tried
to keep
their father away from their mother.
Joe Torre: “My sister had this knife in
front of my
mother and
he said put the knife down. And she wouldn’t do it. And he started
reaching
into the drawer for the gun. And I went around and I grabbed the knife
out of
my sister’s hand and I said there and put it on the table. he didn’t
reach for
the revolver. And everything’s blank for me from there on out.”
Phillips: “That’s not unusual for you, that kind of blocked
memory.”
Joe Torre: “Probably not. It was tough.”
Phillips: “When things got bad, did you ever think about calling
the
police?”
Joe Torre: “No. He was the police.”
Back then, even
more than
today, domestic violence was a shameful secret. The only person Joe’s
mother
and sister could turn to was Frank. When he was travelling for
baseball, they
would call him, usually late at night.
Frank Torre: “It could be from my sister. Could have been from my mother. Because it happened fairly often. Where they would announce to me that my father was going to come home that night and kill them all. And here I’d be a thousand miles away or 1,500 miles away. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”
Phillips: “It finally got to the point
where your
brother had
to sit down, all of you down with your father.”
Joe Torre: “Yeah. He was the one, probably the bravest of anyone
in the
family, my brother Frank.”
Frank Torre: “I had all the abuse I could handle. Up here. You
know it
was killing me being so helpless. being so far away, that I just came
home this
one winter and I said to my mother, ‘Mom I’ve had it.’”
Phillips: “And Frank kind of took things into his own hands.”
Joe Torre: “He told my dad that you’re out of the house.”
Frank Torre: “I had gotten a lawyer to make a one page document
where my
father would agree to sign over the house to my mother. He wouldn’t
have to pay
any alimony, any child support. But he would just sign it, pack his
bags and
get out.”
Rae Torre: “My father would say, is that what you want? and that
what
you want? And we shook our heads, yes. That’s what we want.”
Frank Torre: “He was dead against it but I
was bigger,
and
stronger and probably just as crazy, and he had no choice. So he
grudgingly
signed and he got out.”
After his father
left, Joe,
at age 11, looked to Frank as a father-figure. He followed his big
brother into
Major League Baseball. In 1971, the year his father died, Joe was voted
the
National League’s Most Valuable Player. With all his success, the
father who’d
been so abusive had become more attentive, but it was never the kind of
genuine
approval Joe craved.
Joe Torre: “It was a way of him to show me
off to his
friends
that I was a big league player. And so, you know, I never really felt
comfortable with my dad.”
In 1977, Joe
retired to
become a manager, for the Mets, the Braves, the Cardinals, and
eventually the
Yankees. But through all his years of playing and managing, and through
two
failed marriages, he struggled with self-doubt and fears he couldn’t
explain.
Joe Torre: “Confrontation, failure, not
good enough.
Just a lot
of lack of self-esteem, I guess when you get right down to it.”
He didn’t tell
anybody. But
Frank knew that his little brother was still hurting from the emotional
wounds
inflicted by their father.
Frank Torre: “He always was made to feel
inferior. You
know he had
a tremendous complex, he was beyond bashful. And that’s only because he
was
always talked down to. He was always made into, you know, being
ashamed. And he
basically got into his shell and it took him until pretty late in life
to get
out of it.”
In December 1995, at age 54, Joe finally came out of his shell. Actually he was dragged out, by his wife, Ali.
Ali Torre: “It was quite a challenge. I’m a
very open
person, I
enjoy communicating. And the day he said to me, ‘You know I feel more
comfortable talking to you than anyone else in the whole world.’ I
said, who
have you been with? You know, you don’t really talk.
Joe had just
signed on to
manage the Yankees, Ali was pregnant and wanted Joe to go with her to a
self-improvement seminar. (Life Success
Seminars, A
LIFESTREAM oriented organization)”
Ali Torre: “I was having my
first child. You know,
you have your
doubts. Will I be a good mother? What are the responsibilities? And I
thought,
you know, now is a really good time to check this out. And I asked if
he wanted
to go.”
Joe Torre: “She says, ‘Will you come with me?’ And I said,
‘Sure.’ She
said, ‘I don’t want you to come just because I asked you to.’ And I
said,
‘Well, that’s why I’m coming, because I have no idea what this is
about.’”
Ali Torre: “I think the only reason he went was because I was
8-and-a-half months pregnant and he didn’t want to leave me going by
myself.”
Phillips: “And your life was about to change forever.”
Joe Torre: “And my life was about to change forever for the
better
though. Because here I was with a bunch of strangers, telling people
how I
felt, things I never let out. The second or third night I called my
sister,
called my sister Marguerite, cause all of a sudden it was a revelation
to me
that I have all these feelings. Why do I have all these feelings?
And I asked
her about my dad. I don’t remember exactly what I asked. Do you
remember that?”
Ali Torre: “I think you asked if your
father had hit
your
mother.”
Joe Torre: “Yeah.”
Phillips: “In fact, your sister was surprised you even asked the
question.”
Joe Torre: “Yeah, it sort of opens up some doors that I
chose not to
open up or want to open up.”
Marguerite Torre: “Joe had to come to terms. We cried. We were
on the
phone for about an hour, just talking and crying about things.”
Joe Torre: “It was painful, yet it was, you know, was like a
cleansing.
Where all of a sudden there was a revelation that you started
understanding,
why I had these fears and why I had this lack of confidence in me.”
Ten months
later, in October
1996, Joe Torre accomplished his lifelong goal. In his first year as
manager of
the Yankees, his team made it to the World Series and won. For
Joe, the victory
was validation that his father, who’d made him feel so inferior, was
wrong. Joe
was a champion. Talking to Joe at this year’s Series, he recalled how
in 1996,
he prayed for more than a win. His brother frank, who’d become like a
father to
Joe, had a heart transplant in the middle of the Series. Just hours
after the
surgery, Joe got an urgent message to call Frank in the hospital.
Joe Torre: “So I called back. I got the
nurse on duty.
She says,
yeah, he wanted to talk to you. I got on the phone with him and he
asked me for
four tickets for the next day. [laughter] He says for my doctor. I
said, well,
I have to say yes. I don’t want them to unplug you.”
The Yankees would
not win the
World Series this year. And their manager is now busy rebuilding the
team. But
off the field, Joe Torre, at age 63, has a new mission. “Safe at Home”
is the
name of a foundation Joe and Ali Torre are starting to combat domestic
violence
and the devastating effect it has on children, in honor of Joe’s mother.
Ali Torre: “Witnessing abuse of parents is
a form of
child abuse
in our opinion. Obviously, I’ve seen and Joe’s lived through it the
effects it
has on children.”
Joe Torre: “We went through a shelter in Brooklyn, and as I was
talking
about the environment I grew up in with an abusive dad, looking out
over the
classroom, there were like, one, two, three, four heads I could see
going like
this [nodding] when I was talking about abuse in the home.”
Phillips: “Flickers of recognition.”
Joe Torre: “And you realize how many children this affects.”
Phillips: “Safe at home has a whole other meaning for you away
from
baseball.”
Joe Torre: “Sure does, sure does. You know, if we’re able to
make an
impact, it would be the biggest score we ever had.”
Joe’s sister Rae still lives in the house where they grew up. When Joe and Frank and Sister Marguerite visit, it’s filled with love and laughter and memories of their mother. Margaret Torre never remarried. She passed away in 1974.
Joe
Torre has
recently
developed an organization, the Safe
at Home Foundation, to address the issue of
domestic violence. The guiding principals of this organization are:
VISION We will educate to eliminate the pain of abuse. MISSION FOR MARGARET To develop educational programs to end the cycle of domestic violence and save lives.
We can best fulfill our vision and accomplish our mission by living these values daily: Passion We undertake this work in memory of Margaret Torre and people like her. We believe that people can be taught to change behaviors and that every family has a right to feel safe in their own home. Integrity We believe in being open and honest in all dealings with donors, employees, board members, partners and the communities we serve. We want to be held accountable to the highest standards of professionalism, dependability and reliability in all that we do. Leadership We intend to make a difference and will serve as a primary voice on domestic violence. We strive to set an example for other organizations and individuals addressing this critical issue. Respect We take responsibility for our own successes and failures and want to earn the trust of others by our actions. We will treat others equitably and fairly, respecting the diversity of our communities and the dignity of each individual. Commitment We are dedicated to ensuring that every child and every family have a safe environment in which to develop and grow. We will be unceasing in our efforts to improve the lives of others by promoting independence, empowerment and alternatives to violence. |