David Wells has never veiled his affections for Joe Torre. In an appearance on WFAN on Monday, July 22, the former Yankees pitcher took a few jabs at his former manager, claiming Torre was not “a great manager.”
The event occurred when WFAN’s Sal Licata asked Wells how he felt when the Yankees traded him on the opening day of Spring Training in 1999. Wells won the World Series with New York the year before and pitched a perfect game in May.
“It broke my heart.” It was a dream come true to play with the Yankees,” Wells stated. “I believe it was Joe Torre because he did not like me. At all. Back then. I am not sure if he likes me right now. I have no resentment right now. I like Joe, but I didn’t think he was a good manager since he didn’t treat everyone equally.”
Tierney hit back, claiming that Wells may have brought Torre’s treatment on himself.
“You brought half the problems out upon yourself, let’s call it for what it is,” Tierney told me. “It does not appear that you assume any responsibility for the Joe Torre situation. It is entirely Joe’s fault. Nobody else says that about Joe Torre, but you.”
Since his playing days were done, Wells has been outspoken about his antics, including how he pitched his perfect game with a hangover, regularly broke club rules, and showed Torre up on the mound.
Torre described an event immediately before Wells’ perfect game in which he attempted to extricate Wells from a bad start.
“I didn’t like the way Wells was walking around on the mound and kicking at it and going slow and just really had bad body language,” he stated, according to Jack Curry’s book, The 1998 Yankees.
“[Wells] appeared to have run out of gasoline. “Maybe he’s out of shape,” Torre said at the time.
David Wells Believed Joe Torre Treated Him Differently
Wells’ first stay with the Yankees lasted two seasons, culminating in the 1998 season, when he went 18-4 with a 3.49 ERA and won the ALCS MVP award. Still, he felt disrespected by his manager.
“I went out and won,” Wells explained. “That is all I did…”But when you have to take team flights [with] a day game the next day, but Andy [Pettitte] and Roger [Clemens] fly two days early, what does that say?
Torre has not disputed treating players differently; he has only underlined his desire to be fair.
“My goal was to try and treat everybody fairly,” Torre told Curry. “But I was attempting to discover the correct key for David Wells. I treated David the only way I knew how. Was it different? At times, it very likely was.
He finally returned to the Yankees in 2002, pitching two more seasons for the organization and helping it win the World Series again in 2003.
Wells: ‘I Can Do What I Want’
Wells did whatever he wanted, consequences be damned. One of the more unusual examples was when he pitched an inning for the Yankees while wearing a game-used hat that Babe Ruth had previously worn.
Torre was so enraged that he had Wells change his hat after the inning and penalized him $2,500. Not that it mattered to Wells. He paid $35,000 for the hat and sold it a few years later for more than half a million.
It’s an example of, as Torre sometimes stated, “Boomer being Boomer.”
“I get along with a lot of managers, but there are certain men who attempt to manage you and tell you what you can and cannot do. “I can do whatever I want,” Wells declared on Monday, sticking his heels in. “I am getting paid. But don’t compare me to Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, or anyone else.”
