Little resigns; Torre close

The LAT reports that a Torre deal could be announced tomorrow. The former Yankee manager has apparently agreed to contract terms - $3 million to $4 million are the numbers being mentioned- but he wants to choose his own coaches, among them Don Mattingly, so there's the question of salaries. One other element of this: the possible signing of free-agent Alex Rodriguez, who has close ties to Torre. He's supposedly looking for $30 million a year. Oh, and by the way: Grady Little resigned as Dodgers manager this afternoon. (OC Register) He says it was his decision. “Beginning from the last 10 days of the season when it was first discussed by Grady and I, I encouraged him to think it through,” General Manager Ned Colletti said. (Yeah, but didn't Colletti say that Little would return next season?)

The New Yorker's Roger Angell is pretty broken up by Torre's departure from the Yankees (the "victim of a corporate midfield takedown," he writes). Here's another snippet from the current issue:

What has set apart the Torre era is not just winning but a sense of attachment and identification that he effortlessly inspired among the fans and the players and the millions of sports bystanders. Already known by the fans as a strong-swinging Brooklyn-born catcher (and, later, a third baseman) with an eighteen-year career with the Braves, the Cardinals, and the Mets, and then for his long tenure as a semi-distinguished manager of the same three teams, he became a sudden celebrity, a Page Six sweetheart, in his first season with the Yankees, when his brother Frank Torre, another former major leaguer, underwent successful heart-replacement surgery the day before the last game of the World Series. The fourth game, in which the Yankees, trailing the Braves by 2–1 in the Series and 6–0 on the scoreboard, came back to win in extra innings, beginning their rush to the championship, changed New York to a Yankee town overnight.

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