Michael Ventre

LOS ANGELES - If you’ve ever lived in a particularly troublesome part of the country that was beset by natural disasters, high taxes, heavy traffic, severe temperatures and unfriendly people, and then you moved to a place that seemed like the intersection of Shangri-La and nirvana by comparison, you’ll understand why Joe Torre is flourishing in Los Angeles.

While all of those negative elements don’t necessarily apply to the New York metropolitan area in general and the New York Yankees’ organization in particular, it must have seemed that way to Torre in the final years of his tenure as manager of that storied club. The place became as enjoyable to Torre as Boston had been to Manny Ramirez.

And when you add Hank Steinbrenner’s recent slams that the Dodgers are in the playoffs only because they play in the feeble National League West, Torre must feel like one of the lucky few who was able to swim away from Alcatraz.

But as fortunate as he is, the Dodgers are even luckier for having him on the payroll.

There are few men in sports whose name commands instant respect, and even fewer who also possess the added dimension of likeability. Bill Belichick and Phil Jackson, for instance, impress as many as they irritate. Torre has the entire package, which is part of the reason why the Dodgers are in the playoffs.

This was not your father’s Los Angeles Dodgers when Torre came aboard with a three-year, $13 million contract signed prior to this season. There wasn’t the stability of Garvey-Lopes-Russell-Cey, or anything close to it. The club was a jumble of expensive, mismatched pieces looking for cohesion.

There was also a generation gap. In one camp was the kids and Matt Kemp, in another the geezers and Jeff Kent. But too much had been made of that dynamic. The Dodgers simply lacked a leader who could reach out to everyone; such a need exists in every clubhouse. Torre was not only the ideal baseball man, he was the politician who could create bipartisan magic.

Torre did not transform a moribund unit into a record-setting machine. What he did instead was apply a steady hand through a shaky season that included injuries to key players like shortstop Rafael Furcal and pitchers Brad Penny and Takashi Saito. And he helped the team move on with dignity and hope after it became clear that expensive busts like Jason Schmidt and Andruw Jones would be of no help.

The Dodgers finished atop the NL West with an 84-78 record, two games better than the second-place Arizona Diamondbacks. That marked the fewest wins posted by any division winner. The Yankees finished third in the AL East, eight games back of Tampa Bay, with 89 wins. So maybe Hank had a point.

But what the Steinbrenner kid failed to see is the big picture, which is that Torre found a way to shepherd his charges into the postseason while his replacement in the Bronx, Joe Girardi, did not. Examining all the various factors involved and searching for a satisfying answer is a useless exercise in baseball physics, not to mention an example of major league excuse-making.

Critics will note that bringing Ramirez to Chavez Ravine in a trade with the Red Sox was the real catalyst. But they would be ignoring the Manny Factor, which states that in baseball an explosive device can either go off in the batter’s box or the clubhouse. For Manny, he has directed all of his power toward driving in runs for his new caretakers. In 53 games with the Dodgers, Manny batted .396 with 17 home runs and 53 RBIs.

While it’s a stretch to suggest Torre is responsible for that, having a revered, fatherly presence in the dugout, someone who is known for reaching out to players young and old alike, certainly contributed to Manny’s highly improved comfort level after living through his own personal fires of hell in Beantown. Torre even let Manny keep most of his dreadlocks and continue to play ear-splitting music in the clubhouse.