"The Yankee Years" covers Joe Torre's years as Yankee manager from the mid 1990's to the mid 2000's. The events Torre describes are now 10 to 20 years old, but as someone who lived in the New York area during that time, the book was a great walk down memory lane. The descriptions of some of those great Yankee Championship years, memorable games and players brought back many, many memories. The great plays, great players, and great comeback victories were exciting to remember. At times, for games which I didn't remember clearly, I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, so to speak, anxious to hear about the next pitch or the next batter so see if the game would end in a dramatic victory or a disappointing loss.
Yankee fans should like the first half of the book a lot, since that covers a streak of four World Series Championships. The last half of the book may not be as pleasing, since it describes Yankees losses in the playoffs and years when the Red Sox managed to best the Yankees. But all in all, baseball fans from that era should enjoy recalling memorable plays such as Jeter's memorable "flip" game against Oakland in the 2001 Division series, Aaron Boone's 2003 playoff walk-off home run, the Alex Rodriguez clubhouse tensions, George Steinbrenner's management over reactions, and dozens of other stories from those memorable Yankee Years.
( )

Didn't pull any punches and exposed some of the larger egos in baseball over the past 15 years. ( )

Impressively honest. Great for any Yankees fan. ( )

Very well written, not surprisingly... Verducci is the best baseball writer around (not including the Baseball Prospectus/Seamhead types... that's a different kind of writing).

Not nearly as controversial as the trailers would have had you believe, but there are enough cringe-inducing private clubhouse moments to ask yourself why Joe found in necessary to write this book. ( )

Good insight into the Evil Empire ( )