David Wells has never hidden his feelings for Joe Torre. The former Yankees pitcher took a few shots at his former manager in an appearance on WFAN on Monday, July 22, saying Torre wasn’t “a great manager.”
The moment arose when WFAN’s Sal Licata asked Wells how he felt after the Yankees traded him on the first day of Spring Training in 1999. Wells won a World Series with New York the year before and pitched a perfect game the prior May.
“It broke my heart. It was a dream come true to play for the Yankees,” Wells said. “I think it was Joe Torre because he didn’t like me. At all. Back then. He might like me now, I don’t know. I don’t have any resentment now. I like Joe, but as a manager, I didn’t think he was a great manager because he didn’t treat everybody the same way.”
That’s when Tierney fired back, raising the point 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 said. “It doesn’t seem like you accept any responsibility when it comes to the Joe Torre stuff. It’s all Joe’s fault. Nobody else says that about Joe Torre but you.”
Since his playing days ended, Wells has been open about his behavior, particularly how he pitched his perfect game with a hangover, generally defied team rules, and showed Torre up on the mound.
Speaking on one incident shortly before Wells’ perfect game, Torre recalled trying to pull Wells from a start that went sideways.
“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 said, per Jack Curry’s book, The 1998 Yankees.
“[Wells] looked like he ran out of gas. Maybe he’s out of shape,” Torre suggested at the time.
David Wells Believed Joe Torre Treated Him Differently
Wells’ first stint with the Yankees lasted two seasons, culminating in that 1998 campaign in which he went 18-4 with a 3.49 ERA and ALCS MVP honor. Still, he felt a lack of respect from his manager.
“I went out and won,” Wells said. “That’s all I did…But when you have to take team flights [with] a day game the next day, but then you get Andy [Pettitte] and Roger [Clemens] fly two days earlier, what does that tell you?”
Torre hasn’t denied treating players differently; he’s just emphasized his effort to be fair.
“My goal was to try and treat everybody fairly,” Torre told Curry. “But I was trying to find the right key to David Wells. I really treated David the only way I knew how. Was it different? At times, it probably was.”
He eventually returned to the Yankees in 2002, throwing two more seasons for New York and helping the team reach the World Series again in 2003.
Wells: ‘I Can Do What I Want’
Wells did what he wanted, consequences be damned. One of the odder examples came when he pitched an inning for the Yankees in a game-used hat that Babe Ruth once wore.
Torre was so incensed that he made Wells change his hat after the inning and fined him $2,500. Not that it mattered to Wells. He bought the hat for $35,000 and a couple years later sold it for over half a million.
It’s an example of, as Torre often said, “Boomer being Boomer.”
“I got along with a lot of managers but there’s just certain guys that they try to manage you and tell you what you can and can’t do. I can do whatever I want,” Wells said on Monday, digging his heels in. “I’m getting paid. But don’t put me in a different category than Andy Pettitte or Mariano Rivera or something like that.”
