Matching wits with Joe Torre, as TBS' Brenly can do

Allsport
President George W. Bush, center, chats with Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly, right, and Yankees skipper Joe Torre before the start of Game 3 in the 2001 World Series.

Bob Brenly knows Joe Torre. Now he can talk about it. So listen up.

During tonight's coverage of the Dodgers-Cardinals' NLDS Game 1, listen to what TBS analyst Brenly has to say when it comes to Torre strategy. Brenly was the Arizona Diamondbacks manager in 2001, matching wits against Torre's New York Yankees in the World Series -- and prevailed in a classic game seven walk-off hit by Luis Gonzalez against Mariano Rivera.

"He's got things pretty well figured out on his team and he really has his way of doing things in certain circumstances," Brenly said of Torre a couple hours before Game 1 in the TBS broadcast booth No. 1 at Dodger Stadium -- the space usually reserved on Dodger TV coverage for Vin Scully, who moved three booths over to join Charley Steiner and Rick Monday for the radio call on KABC-AM.

"There's not a lot of chicanery going on with a game Joe manages," said Brenly. "The thing I remember most about (that '01 World Series) was I was too busy worrying about my own team to try to wonder what he was thinking about. I learned that a long time ago from Ray Fosse (the former All-Star catcher and current Oakland A's broadcaster) -- you manage your team and don't worry about them. Just take care of your guys."

Even though Brenly's team won that 2001 Series, some writer still wonder if he left Randy Johnson in too long in a Game 6 victory that prevented him from coming back to help Curt Schilling seal the deal in Game 7? Johnson pitched seven innings of a 15-2 victory that had been decided several innings earlier, but still game back in Game 7 to end up as the winning pitcher and go 3-0 in the series.

Brenly lasted until the the middle of the '04 season before he was replaced by team third base coach Al Pedrique.

Brenly, the former San Francisco Giants catcher, does TV analysis for the Chicago Cubs' WGN broadcasts. He did games for TBS during their first season of post-season coverage, but asked out of doing games in 2008 because his son Michael, a catcher drafted by the Chicago Cubs out of UNLV, had started playing winter ball near his offseason home in the Scottsdale, Ariz., area and he wanted to stay back to watch him. Michael played this season on the Cubs' Single-A Peoria team. Brenly would have likely been on the TBS team covering the Dodgers-Cubs first-round series last season.

For the record, Brenly and Torre did go head-to-head as managers one more time after that 2001 Series, but both would probably just as soon forget it. They were the NL and AL manager during the 7-7 tied All-Star game in Milwaukee that ended up making commissioner Bud Selig look like a confused restaurant owner who just ran out of the main dish on the menu.

The next year, Selig decided the All Star game winner would give home-field advantage to its league in that fall's World Series. And since that 2001 World Series, no NL team has had a home-field advantage for the championship.