by Kirby Arnold
The Reds hired him in 1990 and he turned a team of budding young players—the Reds’ roster averaged 27.5 years—into World Series champions, sweeping Oakland in four games.
Piniella managed two more years in Cincinnati, then came to Seattle and inherited a team much like the young Reds. The Mariners’ roster averaged 28 years and they needed the direction of a fiery leader who didn’t accept losing.
“Ever since I played against Lou in the mid-’60s, he had an insatiable desire to win,” said Lee Elia, Piniella’s hitting coach with the Mariners. “He couldn’t stand mediocrity. Lou expected a person to play as good as God gave him the ability to play, and anything less would be a failure. That fed into the clubhouse. The players knew that when they crossed the lines, they’d better bust their asses because they’d have to face Lou if they didn’t. He didn’t really care about the peripherals.”
Even the 2001 Mariners, who tied the all-time major-league record with 116 victories, stressed Piniella when they lost. That team lost three in a row only once all season.
“If you didn’t know during that season that we were such a great team, you’d have thought we were 15 games out of first place by looking at Lou,” trainer Rick Griffin said. “He pushed those guys and never backed off.”
Piniella and the Young Ballplayer
Bret Boone, the Mariners’ fifth-round draft choice in 1990, was determined to make an impression on Lou Piniella as he began spring training in 1993. He got that chance in the first at-bat of his first exhibition game, stepping to the plate with nobody out and a runner on second base against the Angels, ready to make an impact.
“I was a confident young player and I wanted to show the new skipper what I could do,” Boone said. “But Chuck Finley was on the mound and he had that nasty split-finger. I knew I had to get the runner over to third, and Finley threw me a first-pitch fastball but I fouled it into the first-base dugout.”
Finley threw a splitter on the next pitch and it fooled Boone, who lunged onto his front foot. Still, he made solid contact and smoked the ball down the third-base line, a sure double that would drive in a run, Boone thought. However, Angels third baseman Gary Gaetti made a diving catch, then threw to second base to turn a double play, robbing Boone of what he thought would be a moment of glory.
Still, Boone figured he’d scored a few positive points with Piniella for hitting the ball so hard.
“I’m coming back to the dugout with my chest puffed out a little, thinking to myself, ‘Man, I hit that ball hard. Skip’s going to be happy with me,’” Boone said.
Lou Piniella challenged Bret Boone and helped make him into a valuable player for the Mariners. Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/The Herald of Everett, Washington
He descended the dugout steps, getting high-fives from teammates, when Piniella met him.
“Son,” Piniella began, “you really knocked the crap out of that ball.”
Anyone who’d been around Piniella, even for only a short while, knew that when he addressed a person “son,” it wasn’t a warm, fatherly greeting.
“Son,” Piniella said again to Boone. “You made no attempt to move the runner over. Now get out of here and get your running in.”
Boone was perplexed.
“Is he kidding? Did he just take me out of the game after one at-bat?” Boone wondered. “No, he’s not kidding.”
So Boone took off his spikes, pulled on his running shoes and began his conditioning work by running along the outfield warning track as the game went on.
“Here I was in the first inning of my first game with the new skipper, and I’m out there not knowing what to think,” Boone said. “The crowd out there was really getting on me for it.”
That exchange sent a clear signal to the team what Piniella was all about, coach John McLaren said.
“He’s all about the team concept and that individual baseball wasn’t going to cut it,” McLaren said. “He sent a strong message right there.”
And Piniella kept sending it. He rode Boone throughout spring training, and Boone endured it with one thought.
“The guy hates me,” he said. “It turned out that he didn’t hate me at all. He was testing me. Lou is not for the faint at heart. My first year, Lou and I had some drag-out arguments. I was going to be respectful, but I was trying to establish myself as a major-league player and I was going to tell him what I thought.”
Piniella’s tirades with young players may have seemed personal and unfair, but McLaren said he challenged them for the right reasons. Piniella, in fact, enjoyed those who stood up for themselves in the face of his criticism.
“I would always tell a young player, ‘You will be challenged by Lou,’” McLaren said. “If you defend your turf and come back at Lou in a respectful, professional way, you will never have a problem with him.”
In the mid-1990s, young pitcher Ken Cloude was struggling during one game, and Piniella sent his pitching coach, Nardi Contreras, to the mound.
After a brief talk with Cloude, Contreras walked back to the dugout with a smile on his face.
“What’s so funny?” Piniella asked.
“Skip, I asked the kid, ‘Can you get this guy out?’” Contreras told Piniella. “And he said, ‘I can if you get your ass off the mound.’”
Piniella loved that kind of attitude from his players.
“If you came back at Lou and were positive in your thinking and you showed strength, you never had a problem,” McLaren said. “But there were guys who were intimidated by Lou.”
Catcher Dan Wilson was one of those early in his career, McLaren said. Wilson, a former first-round draft pick of the Reds who had caught Piniella’s eye there, came to the Mariners after the 1993 season, along with relief pitcher Bobby Ayala, in exchange for Boone and pitcher Erik Hanson.
Wilson was by no means soft, but he was a quiet, respectful 25-year-old who absorbed all of what Piniella dished to him. McLaren begged Wilson not to take that from Piniella, to speak back.
“But I respect the man so much,” Wilson told McLaren.
“That’s fine, Danny, but you’ve got to defend yourself a little bit,” McLaren told him. “He has challenged every catcher who’s ever played for him and he’s going to challenge you, and if you don’t defend your turf, you’re in for a long, tough ride.”
Wilson survived and became one of Piniella’s favorite players in the nine seasons he managed the Mariners.
“Lou either made them good players or he cracked them. He made men,” coach Lee Elia said. “Dan Wilson’s first year here was very difficult. If something went wrong, it was always Danny’s fault. Lou would ask him, ‘Why did you throw that pitch? Where was it?’ Danny was strong enough inside to never blame a pitcher. He would take the brunt of it. But through that, Danny gained more strength.
“There were other guys like that. If he stayed on their ass, they either grew up or he cracked them. At that time, we started to develop some men.”
Piniella challenged his players because he wanted to learn who he could depend on in tense, game-winning situations and who he couldn’t. He wasn’t interested in the weak or tentative player; he wanted a player who competed to win every minute of every game.
“I’ve seen him be very tough on people,” Boone said. “I don’t know if I always agreed with it, but that’s his way. I love the guy.”
Many of the players who flourished under Piniella were the ones he rode the hardest.
“He was hard on people, but I thought he was extremely fair,” third baseman Mike Blowers said. “When he chewed my butt out, I usually deserved it.”
Not every player understood Piniella like that.
Pitcher Mike Schooler saved 63 games for the Mariners in the 1989 and 1990 seasons, but arm injuries derailed one of the game’s better closers, and he was never the same. Schooler’s ERA climbed, his save totals went down and, midway through spring training in 1993, the Mariners released him.
“That Piniella,” Schooler told reporters after the
club let him go. “All he cares about is winning.”
Laughing with Lou
Lou Piniella’s intensity often brought smiles to the Mariners’ faces.
“He’s an in-your-face kind of guy, but he’s got a funny way of loosening guys up,” outfielder Jay Buhner said. “And it was inevitable that he would do something that was bone-headed.”
During one game in Kansas City, Piniella got so upset that he vented his anger on the dugout water cooler.
“He was beating up on it, picking it up and tossing it down,” Buhner said. “Then he hauled off and kicked it so hard that he ripped his toenail off. He’s there yelling, Aww, my mother f—ing toe!’ But we’re all laughing about it.”
Buhner remembers how the late umpire Durwood Merrill would bait Piniella because he enjoyed watching Piniella’s antics. During a game at Minnesota, Piniella snapped and, after arguing with Merrill, tried to pull third base from its peg so he could throw it. The bag wouldn’t budge.
“Lou’s trying to get the bag out of the ground and it’s not coming,” Buhner said. “He’s yanking and yanking, and finally he says, Aw, f—it!’ The next day, I show up at the ballpark and there’s Lou on the training table. He’d blown his back out.”
Piniella had a few base-throwing moments, but his most volatile tirade occurred in 1998 in Cleveland. He became so incensed that he flung his cap while arguing in shallow left field, then kicked it all the way back to the dugout. On the Mariners’ bench, Ken Griffey Jr. covered his face with his glove to hide his uncontrollable laughter.
“Some of the stuff Lou did would make us want to flat-out roar, but we always had to hold back,” said Lee Elia, Piniella’s former hitting coach. “One day he was on the bench flipping a ball. He’d flip it up and catch it, flip it up and catch it. Then he flipped it up and it never came back down. He had flipped it over the dugout roof, but he didn’t realize that right away. We were watching him out of the corner of our eye, and he was wondering how that ball just disappeared. His expression was priceless.”
Piniella rarely made a trip to the mound without his zig-zag walk, his mind focused more on the game than the route from the dugout.
“He would swagger out there, say a sentence to the pitcher and walk back,” Elia said. “Then he’d get about three-quarters of the way back and look up, and the dugout would be way over there.”
Piniella’s patience nearly ran dry in 1995 when the major leaguers were on strike and spring training camps were filled with replacement players. One pop-fly drill became such a disaster that Piniella called it off before someone got hurt.
“That’s when the word ‘rumdum’ came into his vocabulary,” coach John McLaren said.
Piniella the Mastermind
Lou Piniella was at his best running a game. He always seemed to be a step ahead of the opposing manager, and his own players were amazed at his knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, and how he could use them to the Mariners’ advantage.
“Everybody looks for the lefty-righty matchup, but Lou was the only manager I’d ever seen who would take into consideration what a pitcher threw,” third baseman Mike Blowers said.
Lou Piniella shares a laugh with Edgar Martinez after a game in 2001. Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/The Herald of Everett, Washington
During one game, Blowers was on the bench sitting next to Piniella when the other team brought in a right-handed relief pitcher. Piniella turned to Blowers, a right-handed hitter, and told him to grab a bat and be ready to pinch-hit. Blowers didn’t get it, because having a right-handed batter face a righty pitcher defied baseball logic.
“He throws a sinker and you’re a good low-ball hitter,” Piniella told Blowers. “You can hit this guy.” Blowers got a hit.
“I always felt we had an advantage because Lou was in our dugout,” Blowers said. “He knew the other teams’ hitters, and he knew their pitchers. He was better than any scouting report. He knew how to position a defense, what to throw a guy, how to use the bench. He pushed every right button he possibly could, and it wasn’t by accident or luck.”
Piniella’s best managerial performance may have been the 1995 season, when the Mariners surged from 13 games behind the Angels to win the American League West title.
“From the middle of August until that season was over, he was so focused on what the job for each night was,” coach Lee Elia said. “It was almost like he was in a trance. Nothing overwhelmed him and every move was the right move.
“When we played the Yankees in the first round, Lou knew Joe Torre and his players, and he could feel every move they were going to make and he was ready to counter them. Lou always made a pitching change in a situation where they couldn’t counter with a pinch-hitter. He always had the right matchups, whether it was offensive or pitching. It was unbelievable how sharp Lou was in that six-week timeframe. We all marveled at it. He was brilliant.”
A Man of Compassion
As hard as he was on players and umpires, Lou Piniella often showed a tender heart.
Before every season opener, Piniella would make his way around the clubhouse, giving every player a handshake and a hug.
“Some of the guys he’d had cantankerous relationships with, but it didn’t matter,” pitching coach Bryan Price said. “He was very fatherly to the players.”
“I was intimidated by him at first because I used to see him from the other side,” said Mike Cameron, who played for the Mariners from 2000 to 2003. “But once you get to know him, you realize he’s one of the most caring people you could possibly meet.”
Nothing revealed Piniella’s heart more than an evening in Chicago when the Mariners, after losing a tough game, arrived at their hotel. Outside the lobby, a desperate young woman pleaded for help.
“Fellas, this is awkward for me,” she said. “I’ve never done this before, but I’m broke and my kids are at home and they’re hungry. I’m not asking for a dime or a dollar. Do you have twenty?”
“You seem sincere about this,” Piniella told her.
“I’m very sincere, sir. I just lost my job, I don’t have a husband and I’ve got two kids at home. One is so small I’ve got to use formula to feed him but I don’t have any money for it.”
Piniella turned to Lee Elia, his hitting coach, and said, “Lee, go inside and ask where the closest grocery store is.”
Elia did, and then he, Piniella and the woman jumped in a cab and rode to the store. Piniella bought baby formula, diapers, and groceries. The bill was more than $300, and Piniella paid it. He helped load the groceries into the cab and, as the woman climbed into the back seat, he gave the driver a $20 and told him to get her home safely.
Neither Piniella nor Elia said much during their walk back to the hotel.
Elia looked at Piniella and saw tears in his eyes. “Lou?” Elia asked. “You all right?”
“Dammit, Lee,” Piniella said. “I don’t know if I got her enough stuff.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Poised for a Championship
THE SEEDS OF THE MARINERS’ GREAT TEAMS of the mid-1990s and beyond were planted in the ’80s with good drafts and effective trades. Center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. and DH Edgar Martinez developed through the Mariners’ minor-league system. Right fielder Jay Buhner, catcher Dan Wilson, and pitcher Randy Johnson arrived through trades.
Those players led the Mariners to their first division championship in 1995 and set a standard for those who followed them. Under Lou Piniella’s direction, the Mariners changed the way fans in Seattle and all of baseball viewed the franchise. They were no longer an American League outpost that was largely ignored and hardly appreciated.
In the mid-1990s, the Mariners matured into a team capable of beating anyone, anywhere, and, in addition to Griffey, those four players—Johnson, Martinez, Buhner, and Wilson—were the foundation.
Randy Johnson: A Talk With the Master, Then Dominance
A baseball philosopher once said, “Show me a player with potential, and I’ll show you a guy w
ho hasn’t done squat.”
After three and a half seasons with the Mariners, Randy Johnson hadn’t done squat. He’d come to the Mariners in a trade with the Montreal Expos in 1989, and in 119 starts with the M’s, Johnson put together a mediocre record of 46–44.
He was a gangly-looking, walk-an-inning machine who struggled to get all the parts of his 6-foot-10 body in sync. The result was the American League lead in walks for three straight seasons and hit batters in two of them. He walked 120 and hit 12 in 1990, walked 152 and hit 18 in 1991, and walked 144 and hit 16 in 1992.
With a 100-mph fastball, a slider that froze hitters at the plate, and sometimes no idea where those pitches were headed, Johnson was an every-fifth-day enigma early in his career. The good Randy was almost unhittable; the wild Randy struggled to throw strikes. He’d walk 10 in a game one start, then flirt with a no-hitter in another.
“He was elbows and kneecaps and came at you with maximum effort,” said Bill Krueger, a teammate on the 1991 club who became a friend of Johnson’s. “He was a roller coaster on the field, but you could definitely see the greatness coming. He lived at 100 mph for the first three or four innings, and this wasn’t 100 mph that was pumped up by a false radar gun reading like we see at the ballparks today. This was Nolan Ryan 100.”
The good Randy and the wild Randy converged for the biggest night in Mariners history on June 2, 1990. He walked six and pitched a no-hitter against the Detroit Tigers—the first in the history of the Mariners.
Pitching coaches worked with Johnson to corral his control issues, and he was tireless in his own preparation. Only time, it seemed, would allow his body to catch up with that golden arm and produce the consistency needed to become a great pitcher.
The key to Johnson’s transformation, strangely, may have been a series of celebrity blackjack tournaments that head athletic trainer Rick Griffin entered. Griffin struck up a friendship with Nolan Ryan after a tournament in 1991.
Randy Johnson (left) and Nolan Ryan shake hands during pregame warmups. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Mariners