Joe Torre and Bobby Valentine will be on the same team, as executive producers, on a documentary about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and baseball for Turner Sports.
The two managers, who at times were rivals and weren’t particularly close, will work with media agent Sandy Montag, who will be the third executive producer on the project.
In a press release, Turner said the “feature-length documentary will tell the remarkable and poignant story of how baseball helped aid both New York and the nation’s recovery in the weeks and months following the horrific attacks in commemoration of the 20th anniversary.”
The pairing of Torre and Valentine is particularly interesting since Valentine said in 2013 that the Yankees were not as involved as the Mets, which the Yankees disputed.
“I was dealing with players who were dealing with this fear factor, and even some of them dealing with a little bit of a guilt factor,” Valentine said on WFAN. “Then there was the situation with the Yankees across town. Because let it be said, that during the time from 9-11 to 9-21, the Yankees were AWOL. You couldn’t find a Yankee on the streets of New York City. You couldn’t find a Yankee down at Ground Zero talking to guys who were working 24-7.
“Many of them didn’t live here, and so it wasn’t their fault. Many of them did not partake in all that and so there was some of that jealousy going around. Like ‘Why are we so tired, why had we been to funerals and the fire houses and the Yankees are getting all the credit for bringing baseball back?’ And I said, ‘This isn’t about credit, guys. This is about doing the right thing.’ ”
Now, Torre and Valentine will unite to tell the baseball story of post 9-11. There is no date yet on when it will premiere.
