Joe Torre had been Major League Baseball’s executive vice-president for baseball operations since February 2011 — he’d been in charge of things like on-field discipline and umpiring — but today he announced that he’s quitting that job to join a group that’s trying to purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers. (The group is led by real-estate developer Rick Caruso, the president of Caruso Affiliated, which developed the Grove retail and entertainment complex in Los Angeles.) There are, of course, plenty of other potential bidders for the team, and several of them have recognizable names: Magic Johnson is involved with one interested group, Orel Hershiser and Steve Garvey are part of another, and former Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley has said he’d bid on the team, as well. Speaking of bidding: The team will be sold in a bankruptcy auction, with initial bids due January 23. [Bats/NYT, ESPN Los Angeles, AP via WP]