Chicago Cubs Baseball

Lou Piniella, the manager major league baseball players would least like to play for?

That’s correct if you believe the Sports Illustrated poll published last month.  In the poll of 380 players conducted in May, the Chicago Cubs manager received 26 percent of the players’ vote, with White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen getting 21 percent and Tony La Russa of St. Louis finishing third with 10 percent.

Believable?  You betcha.

And if I were any of the managers that finished in the top five (Joe Torre of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Eric Wedge of the Cleveland Indians included) I would wear the designation as a badge of honor.

In this age of equally greedy owners and players it’s easy to see how the manager of Chicago Cubs baseball could earn such an honor.  And when I say, honor, I mean it.

Piniella possesses the same qualities as a manager as he did as a player.  He approaches the game with respect, diligence and perhaps most of all, passion.

In another era, the kind of characteristics and traits that would be embraced and admired.  Those are the qualities a dedicated professional would hope would rub off on him.

But that was then and this is definitely now. And for that, one-fourth of candy-assed major league players designate Piniella an honor better fitted to the parade of baseball managers who never lasted beyond the length of their contract, who’ve never advanced the game beyond their own ego and a trip to the bank.

If anything, the Sports Illustrated poll speaks more of the players than of any of the mangers on the list.  Piniella, Guillen, La Russa and Torre all have World Series titles to their credit, and Wedge has taken his team to the post-season with a small market team.

Piniella obviously didn’t help his ranking when he told the Cubs’ biggest underachieving headcase, Milton Bradley, that he was closer to the crap one scrapes off the bottom of their shoe than he was to a major league player.  This came after another pathetic Bradley at bat and the $30 million flop tried to up his batting average against a Gatorade machine.

If there was a sad ending to this story, it wasn’t that Piniella used profanity in chastising Bradley.  It was the fact the Chicago Cubs manager later apologized.

So what we can gather from this little tale is that overpaid, under-performing players can act as childish as they like, disrespect the game at their bidding and expect no consequences for their actions.

I’ve disagreed with Piniella’s managerial style and decisions in the past.  And will likely do so in future.  But, if I’m acting like the south end of a horse going north, Piniella or anyone else has my blessing on pointing me in the right direction.  And I won’t hold it against them.