He makes the dream seem real

Through the morning mist Joe Torre marched, from the Dodgers’ dugout to a center field podium, clutching the hand of wife Ali, the trip fraught with peril.

He walked past a vast and crumbling hole at third base.

He stepped around another crater on the pitching mound.

He trudged through a patch of prickly thorns at second base.

He finally stopped at a spot where Juan Pierre had more errors than assists.

Suddenly, inexplicably, the sun appeared.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Torre said.

He smiled, and everyone laughed, and already he was earning his money, Joe Torre stepping into this cluttered room and making it his own.

Problems everywhere, but, for the moment, all of it smothered in calm, Torre’s stoic expression as solidly familiar as the pavilion roofs, his baritone loud enough to drown out the idle words of a McCourt.

One day into it, and, yeah, this is already Joe’s team.

“I might as well get this out of the way quick,” said the Brooklyn-born Torre at his introductory news conference Monday. “I was a Giants fan. I want to apologize for that right now.”

He was charmingly historic, remembering Sandy Koufax, recognizing Don Newcombe in the crowd, summoning Tommy Lasorda to the podium after the Dodgers chose not to include their Hall of Fame manager among the dignitaries in their dugout-to-center-field march.

“The Dodgers are always special,” Torre said. “I certainly expect the Dodgers will always be special.”

He was also solidly practical, eschewing the usual bromides for the simple tones of a grandfatherly manager who will offer pats on the back, allowing coaches Larry Bowa and Don Mattingly to be the kicks in the rear.

“You go there, you play hard, you play smart,” Torre said. “I can talk all day long, but we have to prove it out here.”

He spoke for nearly an hour, and by the time he finished, not only was the sun still shining above his head, but the platform to his left had seemingly disappeared.

You didn’t notice the McCourts, you didn’t see General Manager Ned Colletti, you stopped thinking about the nightmares of previous weeks and years, you saw and heard only Torre and the hope of next season.

Hope was in the eyes of Newcombe, who said it has been years since he has felt this Dodger managerial presence.

“Why do you think we’re not the organization we once were, what do you think we have lost?” he asked. “Whatever that is, with Joe Torre here, maybe we can get it back.”

Hope was in the smile of Brad Penny, standing in the back, remembering how last year’s younger players never listened.

“They’ll listen now,” he said. “Joe has the credibility of having been there. Joe will make them understand.”

Penny said he was also thrilled with the fire that comes from the calm.

“Last year, somebody would make a mistake and nobody would jump them, everything would always be OK,” he said. “Joe is going to come in here and say, ‘You know, it’s not OK.’ ”

At least, that is the expectation, the first such expectation from a Dodgers manager since Lasorda.

Torre refused to make promises about taking next year’s team to the World Series, but that’s probably just Torre being careful because he doesn’t know the players.

“I am convinced the McCourts are determined to bring a championship here,” Torre said. “But does that mean you do that right now? Well, you put all the blocks in place to move in that direction.”

Here’s guessing that if those blocks aren’t lined up for a pennant run next September, we’ll hear about it, because Torre is alarmingly honest.

Shoot, here’s guessing Torre will be active in positioning those blocks, because his three-year contract dwarfs the one-year deal owned by Colletti, which means the manager will have plenty of say, and an important audience.

Torre will talk, and not only will players listen, but Frank McCourt will listen, because why would he give him $13 million and ignore him?

Already, at Torre’s urging, McCourt is paying Bowa and Mattingly $400,000 a year each to coach, which is more than half of what he was paying the doomed Grady Little to manage.

“It’s all about support,” Torre said, and he didn’t even need to wink.

Torre will get the support not offered the likes of Grady Little and Jim Tracy.

Torre will get the benefit of the doubt not given Bill Russell or Davey Johnson.

Torre will be wrapped in the sort of unconditional embrace denied all Dodgers managers since Lasorda.

In exchange, he has to spend the next three years doing what he did on Monday afternoon.

He has to smile, and tug his cap, and make everything all right.

That’s a tough job around Chavez Ravine these days, a job that has not been successfully completed in 20 years.

But there is a sense that, right here, right now, if anybody can do it, he can.

“You always measured yourself against the Dodgers because they always did everything right,” Torre said. “They always did it with class.”

Believe it or not, that was actually true once.

At least on this day, Joe Torre made you believe it could be true again.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.