Torre: Girardi will make right Jeter call

BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. -- One of his former teams, the Dodgers, declared bankruptcy Monday. Another, the Yankees, is under constant scrutiny for the way it has dealt with the rising age and falling batting average of its iconic shortstop.

No, Joe Torre, 70, does not miss being a baseball manager. He said Monday that he is quite happy with his current job as MLB's executive vice president of baseball operations.

"The job I have now is like baseball without the stress," he said at a golf outing to raise money for the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation, a program geared to help children who are dealing with domestic violence.

Torre said one of the more stressful situations that a manager can go through is dealing with an aging superstar. This is the situation that his successor, Joe Girardi, faces with Derek Jeter, one of Torre's favorite players.

Jeter, 37, who is six hits shy of 3,000 for his career, went on the disabled list June 14 with a strained right calf. He began working out in the batting cage in Tampa over the weekend, and Girardi has said Jeter still will be his leadoff hitter when he does return to the team. But there has been plenty of talk about whether he should be dropped in the lineup and what to do with him in the coming seasons.

Torre said he is confident Girardi will make the right call when it comes to deciding where to put Jeter in the order.

"You have to do what you think is best for the team with the pieces you have," Torre said. "Too much sometimes is made of he's not as good as he was. And you think then he can't help your team. I don't think that's the case, and I'm sure Joe Girardi understands that, because he knows the game."

SEE PHOTOSDerek Jeter timeline

Torre had to deal with some tough decisions after the Yankees signed Kenny Lofton in 2004 when they already had Bernie Williams. Torre said he found that the best thing he could do was play it straight.

"When Kenny Lofton was signed here, I called Bernie up and told him we got Kenny and we were going to go into spring training and see what happened," he said. "I just wanted to let him know that I'm going to go with the guy that I think is going to help us most."

Williams then got appendicitis in late February. That made it a non-decision until a few regular-season games had been played, when Williams was ready to return. He wound up playing in 148 games that season, including 97 in centerfield. Lofton played in 83, including 65 in centerfield.

If Girardi ultimately had to move Jeter in the batting order, Torre believes that Jeter would accept the manager's decision.

Said Torre: "Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you're not going to do it. That's [the manager's] job. Derek has always respected what [a manager's] uniform stands for and the fact we are the people making the decisions."