You are a reflection of the company you choose to keep. Isn’t that what your parents always told you? Only Lou Piniella never really chose. He just got lucky.
He grew up at a time when geography made many of his choices for him, a time when your world was only as big as your neighborhood, which in his case was blessed with a park in the middle of it, and your buddies were just like you.
Well, maybe not exactly. Some were part-Italian. But most had grandparents who came from the same northeast region of Spain as yours did; and parents who also rolled cigars in the factories of West Tampa; hard-working people who loved their children and wanted only a better life for them.
And they got it. Louie and his pals are bank presidents, CPAs, attorneys, successful entrepreneurs, major-league managers. All married 40-plus years with loving children and grandchildren, some boat-owners, some country-club members. They are strong, tanned, sharply dressed men’s men with salt-and-pepper hair and firm handshakes. They greet each other with bear hugs and, when it’s merited, at a parent’s funeral, say, or a child’s wedding, with tears.
If a man’s life were represented by concentric circles like the rings of a giant elm, there they’d be there, just outside of Anita and the kids. Mondy and Tony and Benny, Paulie and Carmine and Malio and all the other guys who were there when Louie dropped 57 points on Brandon High and nearly killed himself rolling down that mountain in California during the Colt League World Series.
They’re the ones who remember when his grandfather slipped him a Cuban sandwich through the left-field fence and a line drive sent tomatoes in one direction and lettuce in the other; boys who skipped school with him to catch spring training and later caught trouble when the prefect of discipline at Jesuit High made them draw donkeys, cut them out and write “I am a jackass” on them.
They’re the kids who played American Legion baseball and high school basketball together, who listened to the same words of wisdom from coach Paul Straub, who had both legs blown off at Guadalcanal as a Marine corporal in World War II and came back to show them what winning was really about.
The old coach is 85 now and sits at his kitchen table with yellowed newspaper clippings and black-and-white photos fanned out before him, his memory as sharp as his outlook is sunny. Louie had him and some of his other coaches at his retirement ceremony, brought them onto the field and had them introduced to the Yankee Stadium crowd.
“Only time I’ve ever seen my dad cry,” says Steve Straub, Paul’s son.
They all genuflect at Coach Straub’s name.
“He’s a marvelous man,” Piniella says. “What an influence he had in my formative years. I’ve always quietly thanked him for all the time he put in with me and the values he set.
“In sports, the will to win, to compete, it all starts earlier in life. And he was tough on me, which was good because I had a hot temper. He started to try to change that process.”
If Lou Piniella is anything, he is reflective. He is in his office at the family’s home in North Tampa, a beautiful Mediterranean-style house set on an exclusive golf and country club, apologizing both for the mess–which is minimal–and for his appearance, which is unshaven and Florida casual.
The good life
He is surrounded by the trappings of success, not material possessions but numerous mementos from his career, displayed among photos of his family.
“It has been a real nice ride,” he says with a bashful grin, and you know he is not just talking about the 1,705 hits as a player and the 1,519 victories as a manager.
At 63, he could be out fishing or playing golf or simply sunning himself by the pool. He tried some of that while spending this season in broadcasting and out of uniform for the first time in as long as he can remember. He and Anita went to the Bahamas for a week and to Colorado skiing. They are planning a family trip to see the Christmas-tree lighting in New York.
Everyone notices how rested he looks.
“The year off renewed his energy and zest,” says Benny Lazzara, an attorney. “You can just see it from his face. He got his glow back.”
As thrilled as they all were when their pal returned to Tampa three years ago to manage the Devil Rays, they were worried about him as it became apparent that no matter how hard he worked and how well his players responded to him, it just wasn’t going to happen.
“He was promised certain things that would have created a better situation for him and it never materialized,” says Tony Gonzalez, chairman of the board of the Bank of St. Petersburg, which lists Piniella as a board member. “He’s a very honorable man and it was offensive to him. It was an issue of credibility.”
Piniella points out that in his second season, the team won 70 games.
“I know it doesn’t sound like much,” he says, “but in three years, the payroll never got out of the 20s (million). I want to please as a manager, but sometimes you need the backing.”
As always, the losing cut deep.
“I’ve come home from the stadium with him too many times after a loss and it’s like there’s something bad in his stomach,” says Mondy Flores, a retired executive and unofficial confidante to all.
“He lost so much here, he was batty,” Lazzara says. “He couldn’t stand it. Day after day, week after week. You’d go see him after he lost four or five games in a row and it was like he was almost dead, clinically depressed. I’m a criminal lawyer and I’ve seen people in prison less depressed. Then he would win and two hours later he would be a whole different person.”
Piniella had followed his heart back to Tampa.
“My father (Louis Sr.) was not doing well and my daughter Kristi (33, who lives with her 10-year-old daughter, Kassidy, at her parents’ home) was going through a divorce and it was time for me to come home,” Piniella says. “I knew Seattle was going to let me go to only one place and that was Tampa.”
Lou Sr. died two years later, in February 2005, but father and son had a chance to say a proper goodbye. As for baseball, Piniella figured the Devil Rays would be his last job. But then he also had said that in 1990 when he was with the Reds. His reason for coming back with the Cubs is relatively simple.
“I really thought I would retire [after ’05], but I just didn’t want my career to end with three losing seasons in Tampa Bay,” he says.
Refreshed and ready to go
His broadcasting duties for Fox this summer, which at first made him “really nervous,” wound up giving him a fresh outlook.
“It was good for me, it lightened me up some,” Piniella says. “It made me realize it’s entertainment. I enjoyed eating a hot dog and having a couple of beers at the ballpark, which I had never done, then leaving the park early and seeing families in the parking lot playing catch. It was a different perspective and I liked it, I really did.
“Listen, I don’t think there’s much more pressure and stress in life–other than the president of the United States–than a big-league manager. I know how that sounds, and believe me, I respect what doctors and firemen and policemen go through. But managing 162 games, if you do it the right way, it wears on you.”
Which is why, he vows, this job will be different. He quit a pack-a-day smoking habit cold turkey after being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes four years ago. In the cigar capital of the United States, this is not easy.
“I’m going to try not to let it consume me this year,” Piniella says. “I’m going to work out, play golf, try to get my mind off it a little bit. There are a lot of day games, so I can go home and have a nice dinner with my family, maybe go to the theater, enjoy the city for what it is. But this will be my last job.”
He looks at the Cubs, he says, “as a four- to five-year deal at best. I’m not going into it to cheat anybody.”
Listen, this was always a kinder and gentler Lou Piniella than people thought. He has been known to shut his office door and cry after a particularly tough player cut or when Kassidy wins an equestrian competition.
“Yeah, I’m a little emotional,” he allows.
“He has a big heart and he’s very sensitive, those are two of the biggest things people don’t know about my dad,” says Lou and Anita’s youngest son, Derek, 27.
Derek is a branch manager who does business development for the Bank of St. Petersburg. Son Lou is 37 and works for a tile-and-marble distributor; he has two daughters, Sophia, 5, and Anika, 3.
Piniella’s children know better than anyone that the man who has been seen hurling a base into the outfield on a continuous loop every time he accepts a new job is not the dad they know.
“It bothers you because that’s not the way he is at home and they portray him as this barbarian,” Derek says. “He’s an intense person but also very kind, very gentle, very intelligent.”
His friends occasionally have teased him about certain incidents as only friends can, but they also defend him passionately.
“I’d say to him, `What was with that last night? You have kids and a wife,'” Flores says, “and he’d say, `I know, wasn’t it ridiculous?’ But it wasn’t at the time.”
Flores and Carmine Iavarone, a well-known Tampa restaurateur, trade off telling the story of the night in Cincinnati when they had a valet hide Piniella’s car at a restaurant after a game.
“We thought we’d get a real rise out of him, but it didn’t bother him at all,” Flores says. “It was like he lost his cell phone.”
“And that’s a guy with a temper?” Iavarone says.
Gonzalez says it’s simply a case of being fair-minded.
“He loves the team he’s managing and he loves the competitiveness of sport and he does not want an umpire’s decision to affect the outcome of a game,” he says. “That ruins his idea of a perfect game. If he perceives an error, he gets extremely frustrated and he loses his patience. He wants everyone to be perfect in that arena and if everyone’s perfect, then the best team is going to win. All he wants is for it to be fair.”
In regards to the temper, there may be a genetic link, but not how’d you think. Lou Sr. was “a tough old man,” Piniella acknowledges, then adds, “[But] I’m a little more like my mother in that regard.”
Margaret Piniella was a great athlete in her own right, and stories about her riding referees and umpires abound. But her son doesn’t use heredity as an excuse for his own volatility.
“I don’t like [film clips of the outbursts], but they’re part of me,” Piniella says. “I wish I could erase some of that junk out of my life. I don’t like it. And I didn’t win 1,500 games because I throw bases or because I have an argument with an umpire.
“But of all the organizations I’ve worked for, I could go back to any of them, and that should say something.”
Neighborhood legend
The old house on Cordelia Street, where Piniella’s mother and younger brother Joe still live, stands not more than 50 yards from home plate of the place they now call Lou Piniella Softball Field. Softball players still recall Lou Sr., not long before he passed away, sitting on the porch with Margaret and calling to left fielders to move back.
The neighborhood has changed, but not that much. You still can’t swing a stick at nearby Tampa Stadium without hitting someone who knows or is related to a former or current big-league player. But Louie Piniella is still special, still revered, still can be seen with a Cuban sandwich now and again, hanging out with his buddies as he was Friday night at Iavarone’s.
“See those guys,” Iavarone had said the night before, pointing to a group of men at the bar. “They’re not that close to Lou, but they all think they are because he’ll come in here and sit at the bar and have a drink with them. That’s Lou.”
Flores nudges Iavarone and reminds him to replace the picture of Lou in a Devil Rays uniform with a new Cubs one. They will see him in Chicago, all the boys will, just like they saw him in New York and Cincinnati and Seattle.
“Chicago is very lucky to have him,” Gonzalez says. “And for us, well, we’re lucky too. It’s another adventure we get to take with our friend Lou.”
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misaacson@tribune.com
