Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Piniella managed with fear
He was Cincinnati's last larger-than-life sports figure. In the three seasons Lou Piniella managed the Reds, “Sweet Lou” was an irony, not a nickname. Piniella came back a Seattle Mariner on Tuesday night, a decade later, to remind us that sometimes, the good old days truly were.
Lou could be a maniac. He upended the clubhouse food table, fought Rob Dibble and threw second base into center field. In 1990, he managed the Reds to a world title, seemingly by the force of his impatience. “Lou's temper?” Barry Larkin said recently. “Bad and short.” Players were afraid to lose.
Once, Piniella smashed a urinal after a game. Or maybe not.
“Who told you I did that?” he asked me in'90, the day after.
“I can't tell you,” I replied.
“Let me tell you something, my friend,” Piniella said. When Lou called you his friend, you weren't. “I didn't smash a urinal. I may have kicked in a locker. I didn't smash a urinal.”
With Lou, it was hard to keep track.
Loosening up
Lou once walked the length of a slick Reds dugout and angrily tried to kick a batting helmet. He slipped and went butt-over-teacups. Players were dying to laugh. No one so much as grinned.
“It was funny,” Piniella told them. “Go ahead and laugh.”
Junior Griffey recalls a similar moment in Seattle, when Piniella slipped trying to kick a light fixture. The next day, Griffey taped a note to the clubhouse door:
“Do not try to kick the lights. You might hurt yourself.”
Before a game in'99, Griffey instructed Piniella's toddling granddaughter to run onto the field and kick first base. When she complied, Griffey yelled: “Look at her, Lou. Just like you.”
And so it went.
Glory days
Lou was the master of ceremonies for Cincinnati's last endless summer. He took a team of gifted jocks and gave them a kick in the pants when a kick was all they needed to become winners.
“Our first meeting, he said: "I don't like to lose and I don't accept failure. Second place is failing,'” Larkin said. “From then on, it was yelling, screaming and saying what he felt. It was what that team needed.”
Said Piniella: “We had a nice, athletic bunch. I enjoyed managing those kids.”
He looks the same: Cap jammed low, eyes piercing and twinkling at once, two-day stubble roughing his mug. You know you're getting older when a decade seems like an afternoon.
He has long since “mellowed,” whatever that means. It's a relative term when applied to Sweet Lou.
Piniella left in '92, when Marge Schott scorned him, then tried to persuade him to stay. The Reds have had five managers in the decade since.
“Do you think about what might have been?”
“Yeah,” Piniella said. “My wife wanted me to stay. It was close to home” in Tampa, Fla. “Two-hour plane ride. Spring training in Florida.”
It was a memory, though. Not a regret. He's an icon in Seattle, worshipped in the city of Ichiro, Mike Holmgren and Gary Payton.
“I liked Cincinnati,” said Piniella, who left too soon.
E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.
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DAUGHERTY: Piniella managed with fear
