Joe Torre says that he’s maligned no one and that he expects there to be no bad blood between him and any of his ex-players over his new book, which the former Yankee manager will be hawking around town next week.
Well, tell that to Carl Pavano, Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson – and, of course, Alex Rodriguez.
The attacks against them and others in Torre’s “The Yankee Years” – the 477-page tell-all first revealed in The Post last Sunday – are just the beginning.
According to one juicy anecdote, A-Rod went out of his way to dress like team captain Derek Jeter. The book says the Yankee third baseman noticed during the 2006 World Baseball Classic that the Yankee shortstop had a pair of hip-hop-style designer jeans hanging in his locker. As Team USA players, each had been given an identical pair.
“Oh, you’re wearing those?” A-Rod asked. Then he had his shipped overnight from Florida to the team’s Arizona training camp – so that he could wear them, too.
The clubhouse was soon abuzz with jokes about A-Rod’s “Single White Female” relationship, a reference to a movie in which a woman obsessed with her roommate copies her every move.
Torre also slings dirt at ex-Yankee pitchers Pavano, Brown and Johnson. He divulges details about George Steinbrenner’s spiraling health, which has left The Boss unable to hold meaningful conversations, and reveals the mogul as jealous of Torre’s popularity.
Brown is portrayed as a basket case in a 2005 start against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. After giving up six runs in the first inning, the volatile righty stormed off the field, told Torre he was done for the day and hid in the clubhouse. Torre found the six-time All-Star curled up in a corner of the storage area.
The right-hander’s fits of rage will be nothing new to Yankee fans. After a Sept. 3, 2004, loss, Brown broke his left hand by punching a clubhouse wall.
“He was never a fighter,” Torre says in the book. “He never wanted to fight you. Neither was Randy Johnson, for that matter.”
Brown’s agent, Scott Boras, did not return a call for comment.
Torre also remembers the perennially injured Pavano’s telling then-bullpen coach Joe Kerrigan, “I’m not blowing out my arm for this organization.”
Torre says he told the right-hander, “This organization gave you $40 million and has been patient with you. What I want to know is: For what organization would you be willing to risk blowing out your arm?”
But a source with knowledge of that meeting told The Post that Pavano’s comment was taken out of context.
“I’m extremely disappointed that someone I had a lot of respect for would make these types of comments in his upcoming book,” Pavano, now a Cleveland Indian, told The Post.
“I wish nothing but the best for Joe Torre and my former teammates. But with that said, it does explain why I haven’t received any Christmas cards from Joe the last few years.”
The book, co-written by sportswriter Tom Verducci, chronicles Torre’s 12-year stint managing the Yanks and ends with his unceremonious departure after a meeting with the brass at the end of the 2007 season.
“He was resentful of the credit I got, and I addressed it with him,” Torre says. “The thing that bothered me is I was getting this credit, so he would try to find little things to tweak me with, just to get my attention. I’d tell him, ‘Not a day goes by where somebody credits me that I don’t mention your name.’ ”
Torre, who now manages the Los Angeles Dodgers, says a debilitated Steinbrenner sat powerless, merely repeating what his sons and other lieutenants said – a far cry from the iron-fisted Boss who micromanaged the Yankees for three decades.
In Torre’s last two seasons in The Bronx, the book says, Steinbrenner’s mind began to fail and his body became prone to tremors.
jfanelli@nypost.com