After all, being in the right place to catch a fly ball as a first or third baseman and catcher was an every day occurance to him. In fact, these skills run in the Torre family, as brother Frank played seven years himself in the big leagues.
So maybe it should not have been a shock when Joe Torre's daughter, Cristina, was able to come up with a big catch of her own Wednesday. . .in the form of a falling infant from a Brooklyn fire escape.
Cristina Torre was having coffee in Bay Ridge when bystanders saw a one-year old baby too close to the edge of a second-floor platform. The baby had managed to escape through an unguarded window in the apartment while his parents were sleeping. Now, witnesses were watching helplessly as the child dangled off the high structure.
Torre said "instinct" kicked in as the baby fell. Joe's daughter has experience with children; she is a teacher.
"I didn't really know what was going to happen," she told the New York Daily News. "You just move into action -- you don't really think about it."
Torre was glad to see the child safe, but that would not hold true for his parents. Sam Miller and Tiffany Demitro, Dillon Miller's sleeping parents, who left him and his three sisters unattended to, were arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child.
Luckily for everyone involved, there were some good genes nearby to save the day.