Joe Torre to step down as Dodgers' Manager, Don Mattingly to succeed

According to various reports, Los Angeles Dodgers' Manager Joe Torre, will be stepping down effective immeaditley at the end of the 2010 season. Hitting coach and former Yankee great, Don Mattingly, will be the Manager for the 2011 season.

In a report from ESPN, Dodgers' GM Ned Colletti announced that the managerial job was "bequeathed to Mattingly as part of a new contract he signed as the club's hitting coach last winter."

After the 2007 season, which was Torre's last with the Yankees after 12 seasons, Colletti requested Torre have a possible successor on his coaching staff. He brought Mattingly and former Yankees' third base coach Larry Bowa.

"I told Joe I would like to have a successor on the staff," Colletti said. "He said there were a couple of guys he would like to bring with him, and that one of them was Don Mattingly, not only as a coach but as somebody who could one day succeed him."

The Dodgers, standing at 72-76, fourth place in the NL West and 11 games out, are all but eliminated from reaching the postseason. It will be the first time in 14 seasons that a team under Joe Torre will not reach the postseason. Torre's reason for stepping down include helping out his wife run his "Safe at Home" foundation, as well as hoping for the Dodgers to find a new, younger voice in Mattingly.

"The fun of managing is still there," Torre said. "But I was telling somebody the other day, you manage a lot by your instincts. Well, you have to make decisions by your instincts sometimes, too, and I just felt it was time to go."

"Up to the All-Star Game, I was very excited with where we were going," Torre said. "From then on, we really have struggled, and I have struggled to find something to help. With the way the second half has gone, we were at a point where I felt this ballclub needed a different voice, a younger voice, and there is no one whom I feel more secure in turning it over to than Donnie."

Mattingly, who competed for the Yankees' managerial job in 2008 and the Cleveland Indians' managerial job in 2010, has never managed in the major leagues or the minor league level. He will get his first taste of managing in the Arizona Fall League.

Yankees' Captain, shortstop, and former teammate of Mattingly, Derek Jeter, was proud of Mattingly and happy for his old manager whom he referred to as "Mr. T."

"I'm happy that [Torre] gets an opportunity to do it when he wants to do it," Yankees captain Derek Jeter said. "[Mattingly] worked hard and put in a lot of time and effort being a coach and hitting coach for a long time, and now bench coach. Now he's got a chance to manage, and I'm happy for him."

"It's baseball, and I've been around the game a long time," Mattingly said, citing Billy Martin, Piniella, Yogi Berra and Dallas Green alongside Torre as influences on his managerial style. "In my heart, I know I can do this. It's a belief in myself that I can do anything I put my mind to."