It takes years to build a historic reputation, especially in a media hotbed like New York City. It's even harder to do so in the Bronx, the native land of baseball's most successful franchise. Joe Torre, an Italian in the land of olive oil, tracksuits and chest hair, was embraced with open arms after a dozen years of accomplishments. In 12 years under Torre, the Yankees made 12 postseason appearances, with six pennants and four World Series titles. After more than 2,000 games in the dugout, all it took was a loss to the Indians in the 2007 Division Series for the team's front office to lose confidence in one of the game's most reliable and successful managers. In his forthcoming book, "The Yankee Years," Torre and Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci combine to recount the manager's final days with the team and reveal some of New York's most well-kept secrets. An excerpt from the book was printed in the Feb. 2, 2009 edition of SI, and the snippet has millions of people longing to get their hands on the entire copy, set to hit shelves on Tuesday. The few thousand words featured as a teaser weren't nearly as outrageous as some of the other stories that have slipped through the cracks (like the antidotes about A-Fraud and Mariano Rivera's shortcomings in the 2004 ALCS), but they are enlightening nonetheless. Torre and Verducci are right in their claim that the manager deserved more respect from the Yankees' front office, especially after perhaps his best performance as their manager in 2007. The bombers made the playoffs thanks to an incredible run down the stretch that allowed them to erase one of the worst starts in the storied franchise's history. There weren't any glaring managerial errors in New York's loss to Cleveland in the postseason either, with Chien Ming-Wang and midges deserving much more blame than Torre. New York is a shrewd place, and the attitude isn't limited to just the baseball diamond. The media and fans are relentless (just ask Alex Rodriguez) and the tiniest story gets magnified a thousand times in a matter of minutes. That's exactly how a legacy built over a dozen seasons of unprecedented success for Torre in New York has vanished in the time it took for his upcoming book to leak out to the press. I initially wanted to wait until I read "The Yankee Years" from cover-to-cover before writing a column on the book's contents and the firestorm surrounding it, but all it took was a few minutes of reading through SI's excerpt to get a good handle on how badly this story has been blown out of proportion. Torre isn't the only party to blame, although it was his "words" that ignited the controversy in New York. He simply co-authored the book with Verducci -- there are some doubts as to how much Torre contributed -- in the same way that he manages and has always acted with the press. He's honest, sometimes painfully so. It's also important to point out that, assuming SI's excerpt was a 100% duplication of a small section of the book, it's hardly presented in the fashion I imagined when controversial nuggets began leaking out. The way the book is written, it reads more like Verducci as the only author, who spent a lot of time with Torre in preparation. It's not a complete collaboration as the byline suggests. With that said, the Yankees are definitely at fault as well. For whatever reason, the front office felt the need to move on past the Joe Torre Era at a point in time when the team needed his managerial expertise and guidance the most. I'm not saying that Torre would have definitely led the team to a postseason berth last fall, but he certainly wouldn't have done any worse than his successor, Joe Girardi. Torre's story describing his final days as a Yankee is shocking, but not surprising considering how stubborn a franchise the Yankees can be. However, his telling is only one half of a story that involves multiple personalities and egos. It remains to be seen, at least in my case, how the rest of the book reads. I will be providing a chapter-by-chapter analysis for RealGM as I read "The Yankee Years," which has turned into perhaps the most anticipated literary work since The Holy Bible, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care, and each book in the Harry Potter series... Please stay tuned! Andrew Perna is Deputy Editor of RealGM.com and co-host of RealGM?s Radio Show. Please feel free to contact him with comments or questions via e-mail: Andrew.Perna@RealGM.com.