As the discussions raged about Joe Torre and Tom Verducci’s The Yankee Years, which came out earlier this year – and I reviewed here – only a few people made reference to this book, which the two put out in April of 1997.

The contrasts between the two books are striking – as are the impressions left in my mind after digging around for a copy of Chasing the Dream and reading it.

First and foremost, the cover should grab your attention — especially when compared with the cover of The Yankee Years. In this book, Torre is given the prominent placement as the author, while Verducci is credited in a much smaller font, and assigned the term “with,” which generally signifies someone who’s there to help clean up the writing and bring some literary skills to the work. In The Yankee Years, it’s Joe Torre and Tom Verducci each receiving equal credit on the cover.

As should be common knowledge by now, The Yankee Years is written in the third person – neither Torre nor Verducci write in the first person, which has led most people, including myself, to assume that the book is really Verducci’s work with Torre providing access and insight, as well as a first-hand source.

Chasing the Dream, however, is written in the first person, from Torre’s perspective with his insights, opinions and feelings given center stage. It is, as stated on the cover, an autobiography, written after Torre won his first World Series with the Yankees in 1996.

Torre had been chasing a trip to the World Series since he was a young boy – he watched his older brother Frank played in two World Series, 1957 and 1958, both with the Milwaukee Braves. Frank was on the winning side in the first and the losing side in the second, with the Yankees being the opponent both trips.

Despite a successful playing career, including the NL MVP nod in 1971, it wasn’t until his first season in the Bronx that the yonger Torre got to taste the postseason. Throughout his 18 years in the bigs, he never made it to October as a player, and his first three managerial stops – the New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals – resulted in only one trip to the playoffs. In 1982, his Braves were swept by the Cardinals in the first round.

But after being dubbed ‘Clueless Joe’ by the New York media, he took an assembled group of All-Stars and talented players not just into the postseason, but to the World Series, where they defeated the Atlanta Braves in six games, and Torre’s quest for a World Series title was complete. It was the first of four World Series rings he would win in five years, and began the journey that would bring us The Yankee Years some 13 years later.

To compare the two books would be unfair – coming off your first World Series win in 1996 is certainly a different state of mind to write a book in than coming to the end of a 12-year run where the relationships were clearly strained.

Whereas I went into The Yankee Years with a tremendous amount of anticipation as to what dirty little secrets would be revealed, I didn’t do that at all with Chasing the Dream. If anything, the only thing on my mind as I read it was trying to draw comparisons between the two books.

Chasing the Dream certainly falls more in line with the traditional autobiography and memoir style, although Torre deserves a good amount of credit for taking it a bit deeper than I’ve seen in other works. Instead of the typical “I was a superstar my whole life” that is so common in similar books, Torre readily admits to being overweight throughout much of his childhood, so much so that he wasn’t drafted out of high school. He worked through it, and with some help from his older brother, found himself finally getting drafted into the world of professional baseball.

His story is certainly interesting – starting with a childhood marred by domestic violence in his Brooklyn home, all the way through a playing career that put him along side such greats as Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Tim McCarver, and many more. His career spanned the entire 1960s and ran through 1977, when he took over as player-manager of the Mets. It was one of baseball’s grandest times, and Torre’s book takes you right into the middle of it with him as your narrator. While he’s the main character, it’s certainly doesn’t feel that the book is all about him.

Chasing the Dream gives you the opportunity to see the process that developed Torre into the person he was after the 1996 season, as well a good look into a slice of baseball during the ’60s and ’70s, as well as that 1996 Yankees team that began an amazing five year run of dominance in baseball.

While The Yankee Years was a look at not just the Yankees under Torre but baseball as a whole during that time, Chasing the Dream maintains a much narrower focus. There is no analysis of steroids, divisional play, or other teams’ attempts to shape themselves to find a competitive advantage. And even though Torre manages to criticize some players from the 1996 Yankees – Kenny Rogers and Ruben Sierra to name the two most notable – it certainly doesn’t compare with what gets doled out in The Yankee Years.

For being an autobiography, Chasing the Dream is pretty enjoyable, especially given that I didn’t go into it expecting nearly as much as I did out of The Yankee Years. It will certainly give you a much greater look into Torre’s own life, without marring it by invoking superlatives and self-praise.

The contrasts between the two books – enhanced by over 12 years of strained relationships – certainly become apparent when you step back into this earlier work of Torre’s. If nothing less, it leaves you wondering how much different The Yankee Years would have come out had it not been for the drastic change in writing style.