The 2007 Clinical Trials Congress had one non-industry speaker: New York Yankees manager Joe Torre. He has survived both prostate cancer and working for George Steinbrenner.

Torre basically lit up the room in Las Vegas, eliciting a mixture of questions about his decisions in bygone World Series and his ability to manage prima donna ballplayers.

Torre found a surgeon in the midwest, and did not participate in any research or clinical trials. His diagnosis was a shock. “It was something you never wanted to think about,” Torre told the Clinical Trials Congress this week. But with the prompting of his wife, he began to research the disease, and to calm down. “It wasn’t necessarily a death sentence.”

Star Quality

Torre provided the customary dose of cliches and platitudes relating to team work, finding the best in everyone and the game of life. But he served them with such flair and sincerity, walking amid the audience, that it was impossible not to like him.

Torre said the experience of being a cancer patient had awakened an appreciation for the role of science and medicine. “Our future is in research and in developing new drugs and getting them to market,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much admiration I have for what you guys do.”

Sympathetic Audience

While clearly grateful to his physicians, Torre could not resist poking a bit of fun, noting the doctors who cared for his hospitalized brother had asked for four tickets to the sixth game of a World Series in the mid 1990s. Torre joked that he feared his brother might have been unplugged had the tickets not been located on the day of the game.

Despite relatively adoring press clippings, Torre has a high sensitivity to criticism. He appears to loathe the press, especially in New York. That struck a chord of sympathy in the audience of senior executives from an industry weary of often sensationalized, scientifically illiterate news coverage.

Shoot The Press

Torre claims he never reads news stories about the Yankees during the baseball season, and decried the media’s publication of the address of a summer home he purchased. That infuriated and baffled him, he said, because the entire New York metropolitan area knows just when he’s away from his wife and young daughter.

“The media is such a huge part of what we do,” Torre said. “I don’t acknowledge them. They love the fact that you read their crap.”