Torre returns home to Brooklyn
Following a celebrity softball game that raised $5,000 for his Safe at Home Foundation for domestic violence prevention, Major League Baseball’s Chief Baseball Officer and longtime Brooklynite Joe Torre reunited with the widow of his youth league baseball coach, Mrs. James McElroy, prior to his throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at MCU Park for the August 9 Cyclone-Lake Monster game.
“My whole family were New York Giants fans in the 1950s, so we hated the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Yankees who always won each year,” said former Marine Park resident Torre alongside the dugout rail at MCU Park. “But strange things do happen and I ended up managing both teams that I rooted against –- the Yankees and the Dodgers in L.A.”
After having an All Star career in the major leagues where the catcher, first and third baseman hit for a lifetime .297 average, it would be Torre that finally brought back a World Series championship to the Yankees in 1996, and later in 2008 resurrected the Dodgers to be a post-season contender.