Lou

by Lou Piniella

  At the same time, Woody asked me how I felt about bringing in as batting coach Ken Griffey Sr., who was working as a roving instructor in the Mariners’ minor-league system after retiring as a player with them in 1991. If I hadn’t played with and managed Kenny with the Yankees, I might have been a little concerned about having him on the staff with Junior there as my best player. But I knew Kenny to be a hard worker who’d been a really good player and hitter, and who’d commanded a great deal of respect in the clubhouse. I told Woody I thought this was a great idea, and Kenny did an excellent job with our hitters if only for two years, after which he resigned to take care of some personal business back home in Cincinnati. I remember a conversation I had with Kenny at the tail end of spring training in which I conceded it wasn’t going to be easy for him coaching his son.

  “Oh, shit, he don’t need any coaching from me,” Kenny said. “All Junior needs is a batting cage, a batting practice pitcher, and a bat!” He was right.

  The team I inherited in Seattle already had a pretty good nucleus despite having lost 98 games in 1992. Junior, though only twenty-three, was already an established superstar in center field. At third base, we had Edgar Martinez, who led the American League in batting (.343) and doubles (52) in ’92. Jay Buhner, my “gift” to the Mariners from the Yankees in 1988, was becoming a force in right field with 52 homers over the previous two seasons. Tino Martinez, a first-round draft pick in 1988, was just coming into his own as a powerful lefty bat at first base. (I’d grown up with Tino’s dad, Rene, on West Conrad Street in Tampa and played stickball with him on a neighborhood lot.) Omar Vizquel was a Gold Glove shortstop, and Randy Johnson was on the verge of becoming the most dominant left-handed starting pitcher in baseball. It was Woody’s and my opinion that we didn’t have to improve all that dramatically on the talent at hand.

  Our top priority was a right-handed starting pitcher to slot in number two behind Randy at the top of the rotation, and we were able to accomplish that by signing Chris Bosio, who’d been 16–6 and logged 231⅓ innings for the Brewers in ’92. We also needed a closer, and, to that end, we were able to acquire my former Nasty Boy Norm Charlton from the Reds for outfielder Kevin Mitchell, who was still a fearsome hitter but had been sidelined with injuries for large stretches of the previous two seasons.

  In the spring of 1993, the Mariners opened their brand-new complex in Peoria, Arizona, which they shared with the Padres. It was also my first spring in Arizona, and I was especially eager to get a firsthand look at Junior. I’d heard wonderful things about him, all of which were confirmed in those first few weeks of camp. I watched how graceful he was shagging fly balls, how he ran with those long, smooth strides, and how, when he swung the bat, it just flowed. He’d hit these towering fly balls over the fence and I’d say to myself, “Damn, the ball really carries in Arizona,” except I soon found out it carried just the same everywhere for him. “There’s thunder in this young man’s bat,” I said.

  Buhner’s power was just as tremendous. He was strong as an ox. Back in ’88, he inadvertently created a lot of problems for me when I traded him from the Yankees to the Mariners for Ken Phelps. The reason for the deal was that both Billy Martin and I felt we needed another left-handed bat, and Phelps had averaged 25 homers over the previous three years with the Mariners. But bringing in Phelps (who had 10 homers and 22 RBI in 45 games down the stretch for the Yankees in ’88) also meant taking at-bats away from Jack Clark, the Yankees’ other designated hitter, who complained bitterly about me. Meanwhile, Buhner was considered a top prospect and Yankees fans were none too happy about the trade. But now, at least, I was finally the recipient of the deal.

  Despite the promise of all this young talent, we got off to a terrible start (0–10) in my first Cactus League exhibition season and I started questioning what I’d gotten myself into. A big part of the reason was that our new stadium in Peoria wasn’t completed and we had to play every game on the road that spring. I remember one day on the bus ride back to Peoria after we’d been blown out, 10–6, by the Cubs in Mesa, we passed a baseball field where there was a pickup game going on. I hollered out: “Stop the bus! Maybe we can beat these guys!”

  I said it for effect, but right after that, we started turning things around and won our last eight spring training games to finish up 16–14. I was feeling much better about my new team.

  Opening Day at the Kingdome bore that out for me. “The Big Unit,” Randy Johnson, struck out 14 batters in eight innings, and in Junior’s first at-bat of the season, he hit a monster three-run homer in the first inning off Jack Morris, and we handily beat the defending world champion Blue Jays, 8–1. What a great start to my first season as the Mariners’ manager.

  Still, I didn’t have to be told Seattle wasn’t a baseball town. Only once in their first sixteen years had the Mariners drawn over two million fans, taking a backseat to pro football and pro basketball (where George Karl was in the process of turning the SuperSonics into an NBA power). It was common for me to pick up the morning papers in Seattle and see our game stories kind of buried in the back pages of the sports sections, with the Sonics and Seahawks on page one. My coaches and I regularly had breakfast in this little diner where the owner had no idea who we were until very late in the season.

  After that most satisfying Opening Day win, we kind of sputtered out of the gate in ’93, losing five out of six on our first road trip to Toronto and Detroit, including an embarrassing 20–3 shellacking in Detroit. But after that, we won six of nine at home and played a little under .500 ball up to July 1. It wasn’t great, but it was also clear that this team wasn’t going to lose 98 games again. The high point of the season was a six-game winning streak from July 6 to 15 that put us within two games of first place in the American League West. That same month, Junior tied a major-league record by hitting homers in eight consecutive games, and he would finish the season with 45. (I should note here that I was equally proud to be the manager when Don Mattingly also tied the record for eight consecutive games hitting a homer, with the Yankees in 1987.)

  I had gotten to know Junior years before when his daddy, Ken Sr., was a teammate with me on the Yankees. Senior would bring him to the ballpark and he’d shag flies in the outfield with us during batting practice. Now, four or five years later, he was a man. He’d filled out some and you could see that natural ability in everything he did. More than that, though, you could see the natural joy he had just playing the game. He laughed a lot and was a clubhouse prankster. And he was by far the most talented player I’d ever managed, and that really excited me. I was a fan, like everybody else. It didn’t take long for him to establish himself as the best player in the game.

  We finished the season 82–80, only the second time the Mariners had a winning record, and I have no doubt it could’ve been much better had we not lost Edgar for over 100 games and Tino for 50 games with injuries. We also lost Bosio for the whole month of May with a broken collarbone and again for another 3½ weeks when he reinjured it on June 6, in one of the worst baseball brawls I’ve ever seen. In the seventh inning of our game against the Orioles in Baltimore, Mike Mussina hit my catcher, Bill Haselman, with a pitch in the shoulder. Haselman, who had homered earlier, charged the mound, and quickly both benches and bullpens emptied out onto the field. There were punches and bodies flying everywhere, and only after twenty minutes were the Baltimore city police finally able to restore order. At 6′3″ and 220 pounds, Bosio was a bull and a real competitor who, the inning before, had thrown a few close pitches to the Orioles’ Harold Reynolds, and I always assumed Mussina’s hit on Haselman was a retaliation pitch. In all, seven players were ejected in the brawl along with one manager—me.

  By improving from seventh to fourth with 18 more wins in ’93, we drew just over two million fans and I was able to get my $50,000 attendance bonus. I was never one to take credit for attendance, however. It’s always an entire organization’s effort, and instead of pocketing it, I donated it to the United Way. When I
told Chuck Armstrong what I wanted to do, Bill Gates, the big man in Seattle as the founder of Microsoft, said he would match the contribution. I called Bill to thank him for his generosity, and he said to me, “Don’t worry, Lou. I’ve got a lot more money than you.”

  On rare occasions, Bill would come into my office just to talk baseball, but he always had these lineups with him that were all based on analytic formulas he’d drawn up. He’d explain these formulas and I would listen and nod my head until one time he implored, “C’mon, Lou. Why don’t you try this lineup today?” I said, “Okay, Bill. Today we’ll go with yours,” and damn if we didn’t win, 7–4! Bill Gates had all the formulas and analytics before “moneyball.”

  One of the most pleasant surprises of that first season was the emergence of Mike Blowers at third base. Blowers, who’d played college baseball at the U. of Washington, had been acquired in a trade from the Yankees in 1991 and spent most of ’92 at Triple-A Calgary. He was not even on my radar in spring training, as a nonroster invitee. But when Edgar tore a hamstring in an exhibition game in Vancouver, Blowers took over at third. He was an excellent fielder with a gun for a throwing arm, but I told him if he was going to keep the job I was going to need more power from him. That’s what I got. He had an outstanding season, hitting .280 with 15 homers, including grand slams on consecutive days, May 16–17.

  It was because of Blowers’s play at third, and the fact that Edgar was having recurring leg problems playing on the Kingdome’s hard artificial turf, that I made the decision in 1994 to move Edgar off third base to become my primary designated hitter. I have no doubt that decision enabled Edgar to play in the majors until he was forty-one and accumulate the stats—.312, 2,247 hits, 309 homers, .933 OPS, and a 21st all-time .417 on-base percentage—that made him most worthy of the Hall of Fame. He did all that in spite of an eye abnormality called strabismus that prevents the eyes from moving in tandem. The doctors said he was basically one-eyed at times, when the right eye refused to go straight. When the right eye would go out, he lost depth perception and the ability to see a change in the pitch velocity. The strabismus would occur at any time, sometimes in the middle of a game—Edgar never knew when—although a major factor for it was fatigue. Few people knew this, but Edgar had to do special exercises every day for his eye. He had a special machine in the batting cage that would spit out little rubber balls, coming at great speed at him, all around the strike zone, so he could focus.

  Despite this, he was one of the most lethal hitters I ever saw. He was a machine. He reminded me of Jim Rice, with that good, compact right-handed swing that produced so much velocity. One of the most amazing things about Edgar’s swing was that every so often, he’d hit a ball that was three or four feet foul when it left the bat, only to have it curve around the left field foul pole fair. He had that great ability to stay inside the ball and get that spin. He was a skinny kid when I first got him—he stole 14 bases the year before—but as he started to fill out he began having hamstring issues, which curtailed his running, and that’s why I felt making him a DH was the right thing to do. At the same time, I am concerned the stigma of being a DH is what has kept him from getting close to the 75 percent needed from the Baseball Writers Association for election to the Hall of Fame. I don’t understand that thinking. Hopefully, what David Ortiz has accomplished as a likely first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee has put the DH in a new light with the voters, and Edgar will get his due.

  A week after the ’93 World Series, Woody and I went to the general managers’ meetings in Naples, Florida, where, ordinarily, there aren’t any trades consummated. But we had a bit of urgency in that Dave Valle, our catcher in ’93, was a free agent, and Woody said we couldn’t afford to re-sign him. I told Woody that in spring training in Plant City with the Reds in ’92, all the pitchers kept asking me if this young catcher, Dan Wilson, could catch them. I told Woody his bat was iffy, which was why he was still in the minors, but that I knew he could handle the pitching staff. Woody agreed to explore it. He wound up working out a deal with the Reds’ GM, Jim Bowden, to send Bret Boone, our starting second baseman in ’93, and Erik Hanson, a former second-round Mariners’ draft pick who’d won 11 games, with a 3.47 ERA in 215 innings, to Cincinnati for Wilson and a right-handed reliever, Bobby Ayala. It was a really gutsy trade on Woody’s part, but it turned out to be one of the best he ever made. Wilson was the Mariners’ number one catcher for the next eleven seasons, becoming a pretty good hitter to match his defensive prowess, and Ayala was a solid workhorse reliever and part-time closer for me the next four seasons.

  In addition to Valle, Woody had another pending free-agent issue with our shortstop, Omar Vizquel, who, in ’92, had gotten an arbitration bump from $360,000 to $1.1 million and was now looking to double that. So very reluctantly, we traded Vizquel to Cleveland for Felix Fermin, a decent shortstop who made just $975,000 in ’93. I regret I had Vizquel for only one year. Vizquel, who won the first of his eleven Gold Gloves in ’93, is the greatest fielding shortstop I ever saw and another of my players I will be proud to see go into the Hall of Fame.

  We got off to a 0–5 start in 1994—which turned out to be the strike year that was never completed—and we were 40–62, in fourth place and 8½ games behind, as late as August 1. But I still felt we were the best team in the division, and from that point on, we won 9 of our last 10 games, and I have no doubt that if the season hadn’t been canceled on August 11, we’d have won the division.

  I went home for the winter in ’94 brimming with confidence about the next season, especially after the way we’d finished up before the strike hit. Part of that confidence was due to the fact that, with an eye on the stadium referendum vote in the state legislature due in September ’95, the Mariners’ ownership had let Woody know they would allow the payroll to increase. So unlike previous years, we weren’t going to have to trade any players because of salary constraints. Instead, on May 15, Woody was able to trade for my old “bodyguard” in Cincinnati, Tim Belcher, who was making nearly $3.5 million with the Reds.

  We did make a few coaching changes in ’95. I moved Lee Elia from bench coach to hitting coach and John McLaren from bullpen coach to bench coach. “Uncle Elia” proved to be one of the best batting coaches I’ve known in the game, and “Mac” was my bench coach and right-hand man for the next eleven years, right through my tenure in Tampa. We also brought in Bobby Cuellar as our new pitching coach and replaced McLaren as bullpen coach with Matt Sinatro, who’d been my advance scout the previous two years. Matty, I have to say, is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever been around. He was the one I could always count on to relieve the tension and make me laugh.

  Unbeknownst to me, my optimism about 1995 was soon to be blunted by two dire events. The first was when I arrived in Peoria in early February and was confronted by a group of strangers—imposters, if you will—in Mariners uniforms. With the players’ strike still on and no resolution in sight, the owners had elected to start the season with replacement players, an absolutely horrible and game-damaging decision on their part. When I walked out onto the field at Peoria, Woody had put a table in the outfield and the “players” from all walks of life were lined up to fill out forms. It reminded me of my days in the National Guard reserves. Fortunately, the replacement players experiment was terminated (appropriately on April Fools’ Day). Right before the spring training games were set to begin, a federal judge, Sonia Sotomayor (who later went on to be appointed to the Supreme Court), agreed to hear arguments on the National Labor Relations Board’s request for an injunction—which ultimately led to a settlement of the strike. Two days after her decision, the real players returned to work, but the damage was done. Spring training was reduced to a three-week cram session and the start of the regular season was pushed back from April 2 to April 26.

  The second dire event, which proved personally catastrophic for the Mariners, occurred May 26 in Seattle when Junior made one of his typical sensational catches in center field, racing 100 or so fe
et and crashing into the fence to pull down a rising liner that robbed the Orioles’ Kevin Bass of an extra-base hit. I had talked to Junior many times about the reckless abandon with which he played center. The angles in the Kingdome’s outfield walls were severe, and the big wall was not padded. Watching him race into that right-center-field wall, fully extended, and then hit the wall so hard, I feared the worst. When I ran out there and saw what had happened—his wrist was shattered—I was sickened. Here was the best player in all of baseball, and, in an instant, his career was in jeopardy. For a hitter, the most important thing is the wrists. Later, after taking X-rays, our team doctor was very concerned. All I could think was what the impact of losing a player like Junior was going to have on Major League Baseball, not to mention for us. The problem was, he thought he could catch anything. (Three years later, on August 9, 1998, in Detroit, he made an even better catch, chasing a long drive by the Tigers’ Luis Gonzalez all the way to the fence in right-center field, then leaping three feet off the ground to snare the ball before it went over the wall.)

  I always said Junior played center field like one of God’s angels.

  Fortunately, the doctors were able to repair Junior’s wrist and he never had any ill effects from the complicated surgery. But he was lost to us from May 27 to August 15, during which time we were 36–37. By the time Junior came back we were in third place, 11½ games behind the first-place Angels. And even though Woody had done a great job of continually patching the starting rotation behind the Big Unit, Chris Bosio, and Belcher, by acquiring Andy Benes from the Padres at the July 31 trading deadline and Salomon Torres from the Giants, I told my players frankly that we were playing for the wild card. I never thought winning the division was possible, because the Angels were a very formidable team.