Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation<\/a>. Across the nation, they\u2019ve set up safe spaces in schools, specialized classrooms that feel more like living rooms and that are manned by professional counselors trained in domestic violence intervention.<\/p>\n ![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785078671_348_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
San Francisco Giants assistant manager Ron Washington hugs Joe Torre before a game at Dodger Stadium on May 14.<\/p>\n
(Gina Ferazzi\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
They\u2019re at schools in New York, Cincinnati, Tahiti and in L.A., at Bellflower Middle\/High School and John Adams Middle School, John H. Glenn High and McKinley Elementary School, Palisades Charter High, Santa Monica High, Waite Middle School and Washington Preparatory High.<\/p>\n
And they\u2019re open to all, whether you\u2019re a kid experiencing violence or you want to be able to help peers who are.<\/p>\n
This past year, the foundation says it reached more than 28,000 students. And since it began, more than 425,000 young people, families, schools, and communities.<\/p>\n
These Safe at Home spaces are all named \u201cMargaret\u2019s Place,\u201d in honor of Joe\u2019s mom, who was for years the victim of his father\u2019s violent ire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tough subject to talk about,\u201d Joe Torre said. \u201cBut you can\u2019t run away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did, though. He\u2019s 85 now, but until he was 54, Torre didn\u2019t reveal that baseball had been his refuge when he was growing up. He didn\u2019t tell anyone that when he was a kid, if he saw his dad\u2019s car in front of his house, Joe would go to a friend\u2019s house and wait until he left for his job as a New York police detective. Joe didn\u2019t share memories like he would later, of seeing his big sister, armed with a knife, standing between their mother and their father, who was going for his pistol.<\/p>\n
![\"St.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785078672_30_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Joe Torre poses swinging a bat prior to a game in 1971.<\/p>\n
(Dave Pickoff \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t recognize what those traumatic experiences he\u2019d tried to bury did to him, not until he started to talk about them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I was born with this shyness and this nervousness,\u201d Torre said before a Dodgers game in May, when the club introduced him and Ali and players and coaches wore T-shirts during batting practice that read: \u201cEveryone deserves to be safe at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring my playing career,\u201d Torre continued, \u201cif we lost a game and I didn\u2019t get any hits, I\u2019d beat myself up. I was fortunate, I had a good career, but there was always something missing. I really probably could have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t change until 1995, when he started talking about the domestic violence he experienced. He was surprised, he said, to find himself sharing his story, opening up for the first time at a \u201cLife Success\u201d seminar in Cincinnati, Ali\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n
\u201cAli, she says, \u2018You want to go to this Life Success symposium with me?\u2019\u201d Joe said. \u201cAnd she\u2019s eight months pregnant with our daughter and I\u2019m not about to say no to anything she asks me to go. So we go in and they separate you, and they put you in groups of six strangers \u2014 and I\u2019d just been named manager of the Yankees, so I\u2019m very self-conscious.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut after a day or so, you\u2019re in it, you know? And then we went home and I called my sisters and asked them questions. Because they always tried to protect me, so I had to drag it out of them \u2026 \u2018Did dad hit mom?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing for me was knowing that my dad bringing fear down on the home was what caused my feelings that I was embarrassed to have. Once I went through that, I was able to go deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Yankees](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785078672_454_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Yankees manager Joe Torre bumps fists with catcher Jorge Posada after a win in April 2004.<\/p>\n
(Brian Kersey \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Speaking about what was previously unspeakable helped him cope with his trauma. He said it made him a more empathetic manager and a more confident man. It also made him want to speak out publicly and to encourage others to do the same, to break the cycle of silence.<\/p>\n
So they\u2019re getting the word out at \u2014 where else? \u2014 ballparks. There was the stop at Dodger Stadium in May, and before that, in 2025, seven major league teams had activations at games, as did 63 minor league clubs who hosted a \u201cSafe At Home Awareness Game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because often we do need an introduction, to connect kids with people who can keep them safe, who can assure them they\u2019re not the only ones in their position.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s talked about this many times: If he had access to a program like Margaret\u2019s Place, he wouldn\u2019t have felt like he had to carry this burden alone,\u201d said Rose Robles, the foundation\u2019s senior director of programs. \u201cThat was one thing he\u2019s really stressed, he felt he was the only one that was going through this.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he would have had some options, some choices for how to respond to what he was experiencing and how to understand it. One thing that we say is that violence thrives in silence, and that is basically what he was experiencing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forty-four percent of the kids Margaret\u2019s Place counselors helped in 2024-25 were dealing with some form of violence at home. Twenty-seven percent have experienced some form of relationship or dating violence. They also help kids who\u2019ve been exposed to community violence or other traumatic events, or who are grieving a traumatic loss.<\/p>\n
![\"Dodgers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785078673_131_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Dodgers manager Joe Torre pauses for a moment while answering questions in August 2010.<\/p>\n
(Jae C. Hong \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
At Bellflower Middle and High School, Principal Jessica Cummings said a Teen Dating Violence Awareness Week and parent workshops focused on fostering healthy relationships increased awareness on her campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are grateful,\u201d she wrote in an email, \u201cfor this partnership and the positive impact it has had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the students surveyed after receiving services, Safe at Home indicated that 99% reported feeling safer and 93% said they used the tools they learned in counseling.<\/p>\n
Torre has absorbed decades of anecdotal feedback too \u2014 the knowing nods he sees in the crowd when he\u2019s talked to groups of kids about this, the cameraman who slipped him $20 to put toward the foundation, the interviewer who shared his account of having grown up in a violent household.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone can become a victim,\u201d Ali Torre said, \u201cOur goal is to intervene and prevent. There are little boys we can have conversations with: \u2018You don\u2019t have to repeat the cycle.\u2019 To little girls, \u2018There\u2019s an option for you\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Joe has opened a lot of doors for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
When you think of Joe Torre, it\u2019s as a former Dodgers skipper. A nine-time All-Star and the 1971 National League Most Valuable Player.<\/p>\n
You should also think of him as a champion of children who now know that they aren\u2019t alone, and that they have people who will go to bat for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some people don\u2019t need an introduction. Joe Torre, for one. You know him. Baseball icon. Hall of Famer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":825129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[26645,64,63,10027,398556,63513,191,398558,42881,35485,591,1861,5948,15624,398557,20637,85,398555,1547],"class_list":["post-825128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ali","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cincinnati","tag-famer-joe-torre","tag-family-violence","tag-home","tag-home-foundation","tag-kid","tag-manager","tag-mlb","tag-people","tag-place","tag-player","tag-safe-space","tag-school","tag-sports","tag-torre","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}