TAMPA - Lou Piniella's dark green game jersey is untucked. His Devil Rays cap is tipped way back into his mostly gray hair and he is offering that elfin, devilish, what-me-worry? grin he pulled out a lot in 1990, when he managed the best team in baseball. Lou looks like he's on vacation. "It's been fun," Piniella decides. "I've enjoyed it."

He's not wearing any of his World Series rings. He's not flashing the jewelry for the D-Rays the way he did purposely in '90 for the Reds because, really, what's the point? "We're not going to the World Series anytime soon," Piniella says.

He has either the hardest job in the game, or the easiest. Tampa Bay is a terrible team with no expectations. For Piniella, winning ballgames this year will be simpler than keeping his sanity when he doesn't. He isn't a patient man.

He left Seattle, where he was king and won lots of games and had great players, to come to Tampa, where he was born and is king, to lose lots of games and have no players. If you want to take some of the fun from Piniella's four-year, $13.5 million homecoming, ask him what a realistic goal is for the Devil Rays this summer.

"Well, we ... we ... seventy-five wins would be good," he says.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays manager Lou Piniella. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

Piniella has never managed a team that's won fewer than 74 games. He has three Series rings. He will be the only man ever to have won titles while working for George Steinbrenner and Marge Schott. There's a medal in that, somewhere.

"Could you have ever imagined yourself saying your goal is to win 75 games?" he was asked.

"That's different than any place I've ever managed," Piniella says. "Seventy-five, that's a rather meager goal."

He thinks he knows how it's going to be. Piniella has been around the game 40 years. He thinks he has a handle on what is to come. The young players will play a lot. Piniella will put up with their mistakes while seeing who's worth his time. He'll be like a father teaching his son how to ride a two-wheeler. You get right back on that bike, Jared Sandberg.

"I certainly have to show as much or more patience than I've ever shown," Piniella says. "I'm older, I'm more prepared. I'll be able to handle this."

The D-Rays won 69 games last year, their best season ever. They have the lowest payroll in baseball, about $20 million not counting deferred money. They will be the youngest team, provided Mel Rojas doesn't win the closer's job. Rojas, who hasn't pitched in the majors since 1999, is unofficially 106 years old.

Piniella has 39 pitchers in his camp. He admits, "I don't even have a close idea what our rotation is going to be."

The club is still reeling from throwing lots of good money at bad veterans in 2000: Greg Vaughn, Vinny Castilla, Wilson Alvarez and Jose Canseco.

What happens in August, when Tampa Bay is 25 games under .500, 25 games out of first place and Piniella's outfielders still can't hit a cut-off man? Does Piniella summon all that patience and praise everyone for trying really hard? Or does he go Rambo on the water cooler?

"I'll probably go for a lot of soul-searching walks," Piniella says.

From the visitors dugout at Legends Field, where the Devil Rays played the New York Yankees Sunday, Piniella can almost see Jesuit High School, where he was a multi-sport star as a teenager.

"I'm home every night. I get a good night's sleep," he says. "The lifestyle's been great."

And he hasn't lost a real game yet. Whatever else this 2003 season will be for Piniella, it will also be a study in human psychology. If Sweet Lou is to become more of a nickname than an irony for Piniella, let it happen now.

"My greatest fear?" Piniella asks. "I haven't thought of fear. Am I being too optimistic?"

Jersey untucked, hat shoved back, grin unleashed, Lou looks great. Here's hoping by October he hasn't aged in dog years.

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