TORBORG'S BAD BREAK BECOMES SAVING GRACE.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

Call it luck or fate or divine intervention. Sometimes something that seems so wrong, can turn out so incredible it defies simple description.

Forced to turn one way instead of another, take a class you really didn't want, stay somewhere longer than you planned. Maybe you don't get in an accident, meet your spouse, discover an elusive answer.

Or save a life.

Jeff Torborg could be a bitter man now. He could look at the Marlins in the World Series and say if they'd only been patient, that could be him in the dugout, managing the National League champions.

Only Torborg is not bitter. And he's not only happy for his former players, a large part of him will always be eternally grateful he's not with them now.

Because if he had remained the Marlins' manager instead of being fired in May, he wouldn't have been at his summer home on Barnegat Bay in New Jersey. He and his wife, Susie, would not have been outside that summer afternoon painting their house when he heard that mysterious sound.

``To this day, I still try to reconstruct what I heard,'' Torborg said. ``I'm not sure what I did hear. I said to her, 'Honey, I don't why, but I think little Tommy Green fell in the water.' ''

Torborg jumped down from his ladder and started running to the Green family's dock, some 80 yards away. He looked into the bay and hoped he was wrong.

``The tide was really running strongly, and it was windy,'' he said. ``I looked over there and didn't see anything on the dock but a big Chesapeake Bay retriever. I couldn't tell if what I'd heard was a child. I didn't know what it was until I got halfway out on the dock.

``Then I saw the little guy in the water about 12, 15 feet off the dock. A little boy in like a seated position, moving his arms instinctively, trying to stay afloat.''

Torborg, 61, started to run down the dock, but the retriever would have none of it.

``I couldn't get by the dog,'' he said. ``The dog attacked me. I realized the tide was running so fast, I couldn't fight with this dog, this little guy was getting farther south. And nobody's out there.''

The young boy was bobbing in the water, being pulled out to sea.

``It was an unbelievable experience,'' Torborg said. ``I'm sure in the middle of the thing, I was in shock. I was yelling for help. Finally I saw somebody in the distance, and I yelled to him. Turns out, he didn't know English.

``I just gestured to him a baby's in the water, you gotta help me, come on. So the two of us jumped over another fence, ran out on another dock.''

The other man jumped into the water first, and together they pulled the toddler from the water.

Torborg said it turned out the father was taking the boy somewhere and had put the son in the family truck, when a woman showed up to look at a boat he was refurbishing. In the blink of an eye, the child had left the truck and walked down to the dock.

As more luck or fate or divine intervention would have it, the woman was a nurse.

``She had him over her leg and got water out of his stomach,'' Torborg said. ``Then the emergency people came. I was scared to death. Because I don't think he was breathing.

``Finally he started crying, water pouring out of this little guy. It turned out none was in his lungs. No brain damage. He's fine.''

The police kept asking Torborg how long the toddler had been in the water, but he had no idea. He didn't even know the child was on the dock.

``Susie said, 'It had to be the hand of God, because you can't hear that well,' '' Torborg said. ``All those years with Fox and CBS with the headset on.''

Two days later, the boy's mother brought him over to Torborg's and told him to ``give Jeff a hug.''

Torborg caught Sandy Koufax's perfect game. Caught no-hitters pitched by Bill Singer and Nolan Ryan. Was named American League Manager of the Year. He'd just never known a moment like this.

``That little boy hugged me and my knees buckled and the tears started to come,'' Torborg said. ``We just know we were in the presence of a miracle. Thirty seconds more, and that little guy is gone, swept under the bridge.''

When he relayed the story of little Tommy Green to his son, Gale - fired as the Marlins' strength and conditioning coach on the same day as Torborg - he had a quick response.

`` 'Dad, that's one of the reasons you're not managing anymore. You were meant to be there for that little boy,' '' Torborg said.

``As much as I miss being with these guys at the World Series, I'm so glad I was there.''

The cameras do not pan to Torborg, the former Dodgers' and Angels' catcher, in the Florida dugout, but to Jack McKeon. It is McKeon, suddenly beloved, given credit for turning a struggling team around. Since May 23, they have the best record in baseball.

When Torborg was fired, three of his starting pitchers - A.J. Burnett, Josh Beckett and Mark Redman - were on the injured list. Dontrelle Willis was brought up only the night before he was fired. Yet to come were deals for Ugueth Urbina and Jeff Conine. Miguel Cabrera was still a Double-A prospect.

``When the starters went down I told the team, 'Just hold on for two weeks. These guys will be back. Keep close. We'll be all right,' '' Torborg said.

``Well, the rest is history. And believe me, I'm not taking anything away from the job Jack McKeon has done. He's done a magnificent job, almost magical.''

Torborg could make a claim that if his longtime friend, Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, had only been more patient, all the same good things could have happened for him, but he will not.

``That would be presumptuous of me,'' he said. ``I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't push the buttons the same way. But it certainly was something we thought we could do from Day One.

``I'm never one to worry about could-have-beens. Believe me, I am so proud of these kids. It's just a neat bunch of guys.''

Torborg calls himself retired now. He quietly visited the team once in Philadelphia in September but has no plans to attend a World Series game in Miami.

He has managed five different teams but never advanced to the playoffs. Something could happen in broadcasting, but he doesn't expect there to be more managerial offers.

``Not after five tries,'' he said. ``Especially after this one. They'll think, 'Shoot, they got rid of that guy and they finally won.' ''

Torborg said he was offered a job coaching the Yankees - where he had previously coached - by George Steinbrenner after he was fired, but a comment his wife made stayed with him: ``I'm so tired of living in other people's houses.''

If he had taken Steinbrenner up on his offer, he would be in the opposing World Series dugout right now. And, of course, would not have been there at his summer home for Tommy Green IV.

The day before Green fell into the bay, Torborg said he and his wife had traveled to Cape May, at the tip of New Jersey, to visit the Victorian homes.

His wife bought a postcard of one lovely Victorian, now a bed and breakfast. It was called ``Angel by the Sea.''

``It was as if,'' Torborg said, ``an angel tapped me on the shoulder.''

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(color) ``That little boy hugged me and my knees buckled and the tears started to come.'' - Jeff Torborg, former Marlins manager, on being thanked by Tommy Green, the boy he saved from drowning