LOS ANGELES – Joe Torre was the first and last major league manager to be ejected by umpire Doug Harvey. And on the day Harvey was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Torre admitted he went looking for that final thumb.
"I didn't know I was his first one until he told me about a month before," Torre recalled Sunday before his Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Mets. "He said to me: 'I'd like you to be the last one, too. I said, 'OK, we'll figure it out.' That September, I was managing the Cardinals at Shea Stadium and we were winning by about five runs. So around the seventh inning, I yelled at him about a pitch — I figured I may not get a better shot at this thing.
"He came over to me and I had to explain what we were doing, because it certainly wasn't first and foremost in his mind," Torre added. "Then I started arguing with him, and I said: 'This is it.' And he looked at me like, 'What do you mean this is it?' I said, 'Remember? You wanted me to be the last guy you threw out.' And he started smiling at me, waved his arm and said, 'Get out of here.'"
Harvey spent 31 seasons in the big leagues. He had a reputation as a solid balls-and-strikes ump and someone who didn't hold grudges.
"He's always had that nickname, 'God,' because he's never missed a pitch," Torre said. "The one thing you could always respect about him was that if he had an argument with you and threw you out, it never carried over. It stopped right there. And that I admired. I'm happy for him."
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