Lou

by Lou Piniella

  Beating the Pirates reinforced my feeling we had a really good team. I was able to rest my pitching the last month of the season and I didn’t have to apply the whip. But now, in the World Series, we were faced with an even bigger challenge in the Oakland A’s, managed by my old Tampa pal and Pony League teammate Tony La Russa. The A’s had won the most games (103) of any team in baseball, and with the “Bash Brothers,” Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire (combined 76 homers), plus Rickey Henderson (65 stolen bases, 1.016 OPS) at the top of the order, they had the most formidable lineup we had faced all year. Very few people gave us a chance, but they overlooked three things: (1) our kids were confident now; (2) we had a power-pitching staff and the A’s hitters had not seen that kind of velocity in the American League; and (3) they had a fastball staff and our hitters hit fastballs better than any other team in the National League.

  I first saw Jose Rijo in 1984 when he was a nineteen-year-old rookie with the Yankees, and you could tell right away this kid had the makings to be a dominant starting pitcher in the majors. All he needed was confidence. That confidence fully manifested itself in 1990, when he finished fifth in the National League in ERA (2.70) and second in hits per nine innings (6.899). He was the hardest thrower of our starters and I figured the A’s were not going to be too comfortable facing him. They weren’t. Rijo tossed seven shutout innings in our 7–0 game 1 win, in which the Bash Brothers were held to a collective 0-for-5.

  I had hoped to pitch Browning in game 2, but his wife was having a baby and we didn’t know when he’d be able to get back from the hospital. So I went with our other lefty, Danny Jackson, who wasn’t able to get through the third inning, and after four we were trailing 4–3. That’s when I got scared. We needed innings, but from whom was I going to get them? Enter Jack Armstrong, whom I’d left off the roster for the Pittsburgh series. Jack had certainly had plenty of rest, and he gave us a much-belated encore to his All-Star-worthy first half by shutting down the A’s on one hit through the fourth, fifth, and sixth. A triple by Hatcher and an RBI infield groundout by Braggs enabled us to tie the game in the eighth and knock out Tony’s 27-game winner, Bob Welch, and Joe Oliver won it in the tenth with an RBI single off Tony’s future Hall of Fame closer Dennis Eckersley. It was only the fourth time all season Welch hadn’t made it through eight innings and only the third time in 53 chances Eckersley had blown a save. But we were on a roll and undeterred by the stats or pedigree of Tony’s stars. In the top of the tenth inning, I looked down at the end of the dugout and there was Browning. I couldn’t believe he’d left the hospital and his newborn baby and rushed back to the stadium. “I’m here if you need me, Skip,” he said.

  Thanks to Oliver, I didn’t need Browning until two days later, when the series resumed in Oakland for game 3. He didn’t have his best stuff, but he didn’t need it as we rocked the A’s Mike Moore for eight hits and six runs in 2⅔ innings, including two homers by Sabo, a leadoff shot in the second and a two-run blast in the third. Browning gave up three runs in six innings and then I turned it over to the Nasty Boys, Dibble and Myers, who shut the A’s down in the last three innings.

  We completed the sweep, which some people have called one of the biggest upsets in World Series history, with Rijo pitching another gem—8⅓ innings, two hits, one run, and nine strikeouts—in game 4. Rijo’s dominating performance was fortunate, as we lost both Eric Davis, who suffered a gruesome injury (lacerated kidney) diving for a ball in left field, and Billy Hatcher, who was hit by a pitch in the hand, in the first inning. Neither one of them would have been able to play in any more games had the series continued.

  To this day, all these years later, I still cannot fully describe the elation—and redemption—I felt sitting in the visiting manager’s office at the Oakland Coliseum in the aftermath of winning the World Series. That same night, Mr. Steinbrenner, who was on suspension from baseball, was the host of Saturday Night Live in New York, and in his opening monologue he joked that at 11:15 p.m., he bought the Cincinnati Reds. He then later made a quick reference to “Lou winning game 4.” No public congratulations. After most of the reporters had left, I was sitting there with Suzyn Waldman and a couple of New York writers when somebody mentioned that Mr. Steinbrenner had been playing the buffoon on Saturday Night Live while I was winning the World Series, and asked me if there was anything I wanted to say to him.

  I thought about it for a few seconds and then replied, “Yes there is. George … I can manage!”

  It was the wrong response. I reacted out of pride. What I should have said was, “I just want to thank Mr. Steinbrenner for the opportunity to manage and instilling in me the will to win.”

  A couple of days later, I did get a congratulatory telegram of sorts from Mr. Steinbrenner that said simply, “I taught you well.”

  Never once did he tell me “job well done” when I worked for him. I tried to please him but I always fell short. I’ve been told he said the same thing about his relationship with his own father.

  CHAPTER 9

  Nasty Doings and Doggie Poop

  Only in the insensitive, oblivious, penurious world of Marge Schott could the joy of winning the world championship all but be extinguished in just a couple of hours. I’d like to say we partied into the San Francisco night—as we deserved to do—and woke up Sunday morning, with a beautiful hangover, basking as the champions we were. Unfortunately, the only person in the baseball universe on whom the supreme accomplishment of sweeping the winningest team in baseball in the World Series was lost was our owner. At our supposed victory party back at our hotel in San Francisco, Marge neglected to buy any food. It seemed she wasn’t happy that we won the World Series in Oakland and didn’t bring it back to Cincinnati where she could have gotten another gate. We were starving by the time we got back to the hotel and I remember winding up celebrating in a little hamburger joint around the corner with eight or nine players and wives at 3:00 a.m.

  Meanwhile, Eric Davis was lying in a hospital room in serious condition as doctors worked to repair his kidney, and we had to leave him behind. I called him in the hospital as soon as we got back to Cincinnati, and he was distraught about having to miss the parade. He had to remain in the hospital for six days. Making matters worse was Marge’s refusal to pay for either his plane fare home or the approximate $6,000 hotel bill for his family while he was hospitalized. It left a sour taste in all our mouths and left me wondering just how long I was going to be able to put up with Marge’s mercurial and crude behavior.

  After her husband, Charles, died of a heart attack in 1968 and left her his auto dealership and stakes in some other local industries, she lived by herself with her Saint Bernards in that big house in Indian Hill. She’d bring the dogs to the stadium every day, and before the games she’d come out on the field with a cigarette in her hand and one of the dogs would invariably get away from her and run out to right field and take a dump. Then he’d come running back to the infield, circle around second base and take a leak on the pitcher’s mound. That’s when two guys in tuxedoes would come running out with pooper-scoopers to clean up the messes and the grounds crew would have to repair the mound—all of this holding up the start of the game.

  Of course, my Yankee teammates might say I’m a fine one to talk when it comes to on-field shenanigans delaying the start of games.

  “Everybody knows Lou was obsessed with hitting, to the point where he couldn’t walk past a mirror without stopping to practice his batting swing,” related Ron Guidry. “Everywhere he went, he’d be practicing his swing—just walking down the street in visiting cities, getting up in the middle of restaurants. But I remember this one time in particular, early in 1977 at Yankee Stadium. I was on the mound, preparing to throw my first pitch, waiting for the sign from Thurman, when suddenly, Thurman lifts up his mask and starts walking toward me.

  “‘What’s going on?’ I said to him.

  “Thurman points out to right field where Lou, his back to the field, is practicing his swing, total
ly oblivious to the fact that the game is beginning.

  “‘We have to wait for him to get done out there,’ Thurman said.

  “We both stood there, laughing, until Thurman yelled over to Willie Randolph at second: ‘Ask Lou when it will be all right with him start this damn game!’”

  Then there were Marge’s superstitions, in which she would rub dog hair over everybody and everything for good luck. One time she was sitting behind our dugout and pulled out a clump of dog hair and gave it to the bat boy and told him to sprinkle it all over the bat rack to wake up our hitters. The problem was it was 100 degrees that day and the dog hair all stuck to the pine tar on the bats and we had to painstakingly scrape it all off. On the road, Marge would send me these “doggie grams” saying things like, “Doggone shame you lost” or “Doggone good game,” which she would follow up with a phone call, saying, “Did you get your doggie gram today, honey?”

  Marge left me alone when it came to managing the team and she wasn’t demanding and tough like Mr. Steinbrenner. But where Mr. Steinbrenner greatly differed from her was that he’d spend money to win, while Marge was frugal and wouldn’t spend money on anything, even a World Series victory party. Once a month she’d call me up to her suite to talk about the team with her lady friends and she’d ask, “What would you like to drink?” I’d answer vodka and she’d pull out this big jug of vodka that was absolutely vile. Finally, the next time she called me up, I brought my own bottle of Absolut vodka.

  “Oh,” she said, “we’ll save this for a special occasion.”

  “No, Marge,” I said. “This is the special occasion.”

  Marge was a big patron of the Cincinnati Zoo and the Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati and she frequently had parties at the house with some of the zoo animals. At one of them she had this elephant and encouraged everyone to take a ride on him. People didn’t want to say no to Marge and one of the people she convinced to do it was Steamer, who subsequently fell off the elephant and jammed his shoulder. I was never quite sure why, but Marge never liked the Steamer and after the 1991 season she ordered Bob Quinn to fire him over my strong objections.

  “I’m pretty sure I know why,” said Steamer. “One time before the game, I was standing on the field next to the gate where Marge always went through to get out onto the field. She came down with one of the Saint Bernards and I said to the guard, ‘Open the gate to let the two dogs on the field.’ I’m sure Marge heard me.”

  One time at a fundraiser she held for the zoo at Riverfront Stadium, Marge wanted to arrange a race between a cheetah and Randy Myers.

  “A race?” I said. “Randy’s my closer. What if he pulls a muscle? I can’t take that chance.”

  “You never mind,” Marge said, “the cheetah’s going to start four hundred feet away at the outfield wall and Randy will start behind second base.”

  All of a sudden the cheetah came flying over the mound and almost knocked Randy over.

  Another time in spring training Marge rented out a restaurant on Dale Mabry Boulevard in Tampa for a twenty-fifth anniversary party for Anita and me. All the coaches and our friends from Tampa were there, and at one point Marge thought it would be cute if she handcuffed Anita and me together. It was funny for a while as Anita and I strolled the restaurant “inseparably” handcuffed. But then Marge confessed that she’d somehow lost the key to the handcuffs and we had to call a cop to saw them off. That was truly funny. Marge did have a great sense of humor and I did like her, as did my wife and my kids.

  Marge’s quirkiness notwithstanding, I had a lot of fun in Cincinnati, especially that first year. Sammy Perlozzo loves telling the story about how I tried to help the Magnum, PI and Blue Bloods TV star Tom Selleck get a hit off a major-league pitcher but finally lost patience:

  Selleck was a big Tigers fan and was in spring training as a celebrity guest with them in Lakeland when we came over there for one of our first games of the spring. In the ninth inning, the Tigers asked our permission to allow Selleck to pinch-hit, and much to my surprise, Lou agreed. Tim Layana, who had this great knuckle curve, was on the mound for us, and Lou decided he was gonna let Selleck get a hit. So he yells out to Layana, “Let him hit it!” Layana laid one in and Selleck fouled it off. This happened three straight times, Layana laying it in and Selleck fouling them off. Finally, Lou throws up his arms and screams at Layana, “Okay, that’s enough! I’m tired of this. Throw him the damn knuckle curve!”—which Layana did and Selleck struck out. We were all standing there in the dugout, doubling over with laughter.

  One of my pals, Bill Parcells, spent a lot of time around the team, in spring training and periodically on the road, and he’d kid me about how much easier it was to manage a baseball game than it was to coach football. So at one point, I told him I was appointing him as my “runs” coach, meaning he would sit up in the press box and relay signs down to me on what to do in certain situations. This one game, in Philadelphia, we went into the seventh inning trailing 2–1 when Hal Morris led off with a triple and twenty-five minutes later we’d batted around for seven runs. At the end of the inning, I looked up to the press box and there’s Bill, grinning from ear to ear, shouting down to me, “Is that enough? This game is easy!”

  Bill was a real baseball fan and he knew the game and spent a lot of time picking the brains of my coaches, in particular Perlozzo, with whom he loved talking about signs. Sammy always used to tell people that I didn’t really have any signs and instead lip-synched them to him, which is only partially true. I always felt the other team could steal signs, which is why a lot of the time I had my bench coach give the actual signs.

  “When it came to signs, we used to call it ‘holler ball,’” said Perlozzo. “Lou got impatient giving signs and more often than not he’d just lip-synch them. The other coaches told me that my most important job was to not ever get sick because I was the only one who could read Lou’s lips. I’ll always remember this one game we played against the Astros in the Astrodome where the dugouts were very close to the field and you could see and hear the manager in the other dugout real easy. We had a runner on first and Lou wanted to call for a hit-and-run. He’s on the top step of the dugout lip-synching ‘hit-and-run’ to me. I look over at the other dugout and Art Howe, the Astros’ manager, is laughing because he could read Lou’s lips too. Now I have to decide: Do I put the hit-and-run on anyway? I gotta do what Lou says, so I put it on and, of course, Howe calls a pitchout and the runner’s thrown out at second. When I got back to the dugout, Lou says to me, ‘I think they got your signs!’”

  The 1990 Reds were only the fourth team in major-league history—the 1927 Yankees, the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, and the 1984 Tigers were the others—to go wire-to-wire and win the World Series (in 2005, the White Sox later joined that list), and I was eager to see what Marge had in mind about that salary adjustment we’d agreed to after I took that initial $50,000 pay cut when I signed on as manager. After all, we couldn’t have done much better, and I was looking for an adjustment from $350,000 to $500,000. But all through November, December, and January I had no communication from her, so in early February I called Bob Quinn and asked him to check into it. But when he called Marge, she told him to stay out of it, so I called her myself.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” she said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  Right. Now I called David Fishof, my marketing agent in New York, and asked him to see if he could get this resolved. A day later, he called and said he’d worked out a deal that would pay me $650,000. All those years I never had an agent negotiate my contracts, and all I could think of was all that money I’d cost myself. It was not until I hired Alan Nero a few years later when I’d gone to Seattle—where I was still underpaid—that my contracts really went up. Alan was having breakfast with Randy Johnson, who was one of his clients, in a hotel on the road when I met him, and during the course of our conversation he asked me what I was making. I had a flashback to Gabe Paul all those years ago with the Yankees telling me, “Don’t t
ell anyone what you’re making.” That’s how they kept salaries down. When I told Alan, he was aghast.

  Even though we were defending world champions, Bob and I knew we needed to add pitching, and we went to the winter meetings in Miami Beach with the scouts determined to fill that need. But when Marge showed up, she all but shut us down. “Oh, no, no!” she shrieked. “You all won last year. You can’t trade any of these players. I love these players! You all can do it again.”

  Marge’s problem was she got attached to her players, and there was nothing wrong with that except we were very thin pitchingwise and we all knew standing pat was a recipe for losing. I only wish she’d had an equal loyalty and affection for our scouts. Instead, Marge was constantly complaining about the scouts, one time moaning publicly, “All they do is sit around and watch baseball games. Why should I have to pay them for that?” It was that attitude that prompted Jimmy Stewart, my right-hand scout, to jump ship after the 1990 season and sign on with the Phillies. The Reds had one of the smallest scouting staffs in the majors, but, lucky for Marge, they were all top notch. The proof was in all those homegrown players on the 1990 team.

  We started the ’91 season with essentially the same team and we held our own, finishing April in first place, and later winning 9 of 11 games from June 23 to July 5 to pull within three games of the first-place Dodgers. That was as good as it got for us. In late June, Rijo, Charlton, and Scott Scudder, my fifth starter, all went on the disabled list, and the thin pitching that had been so much a concern to me back in the winter manifested itself the rest of the season. Rijo, after missing five weeks with a broken ankle, did come back to make a strong run at the Cy Young Award (15–6, 2.51 ERA), but after Browning, with 14 wins, none of our other starters won more than seven games, and Randy Myers (3.55 ERA after 2.08 in ’90) had a major regression in the bullpen. Myers’s struggles disarmed the Nasty Boys, and at one point I had to take him out of the closer’s role, a decision he found difficult to accept. Randy was an extremely competitive guy, sometimes a little volatile. He was a big, strong guy and before games, dressed up in that bivouac outfit and army helmet, he liked to roughhouse with my son Derek. One day, however, he body-slammed him! Derek came into my office and said, “That Myers is really rough!” and I had to have a talk with Randy.