Much ado about nothing when Lou Piniella yells at you

Lou Piniella walks away from a discussion with an umpire in 2008 (image via Wikipedia).

It is the baseball “money shot” in the eyes of video producers from the 200th market to ESPN: Lou Piniella erupting in his post-game news conference.

Been there, done that, the most famous being in 2007 when Sweet Lou responded to my question, ” What isn’t working?” with his famed “You saw the damn game!” blowback. Most recently, on April 28, when I asked why he didn’t have Mike Fontenot bunt Marlon Byrd over to third to get the tying run in scoring position, Piniella retorted, “Bunting what? With a left-hand hitter up?…What kind of baseball are you playing? Really, what kind of baseball do you play?”

That became the most replayed video clip and sound bite all over TV, radio and the internet along with reams of published quotes. For the next 24 hours, I got e-mails and people stopping me all over Wrigley Field, all saying the question was appropriate, all reacting in astonishment to Piniella.

What a waste of energy. It all was much ado about nothing.

Remember Tom Hanks’ classic line from “A League of Their Own?”  “There’s No Crying in Baseball!” his Jimmy Foxx-manager type yelled at a trembling female ballplayer. Well, Ralph Branca cried after serving up Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in 1951. But tears are not advisable. What is ingrained in our grand ol’ game is yelling and screaming. If you haven’t been yelled at by a manager, exec or player in three decades of covering the game, you haven’t been bar mitzvahed. You are not yet a man!

Sweet Lou told me in 2007 he’d rather be known as a smart baseball man than a colorful baseball man, the latter for all his verbal and physical histrionics dating back to his clutch-hitting days with the Royals and Yankees. At the same time, Piniella suggested the lords of the game want to squeeze out all the color from the game. Managers used to yell all the time. There was no such thing as political correctness.

Media sat in manager’s offices and heard off-color comments and earthy analysis in the laughin’, scratchin’ and spittin’ style. Now the skippers are staged-managed in press conferences, carefully looked over by handlers nervous about any awkward comments. Piniella himself said he was yanked out of his “comfort zone” by doing a press conference in a too-cozy interview room rather than his office. He has never blown up in his office or pre-game on the bench, holding court.

Media across the board must be hard up if they have to wait for Piniella to raise his voice and make an issue out of him getting a bit chippy with a reporter. It happened all the time back in the day. Leo Durocher almost fought with scribe Jerome Holtzman, an ex-Marine.

At least the latest Piniella verbiage had a short shelf life. Too bad Tiger Woods’ confession of 121 affairs during his marriage or another Milton Bradley bird flipped to the fans did not take place on April 28.

The advice here for sound-bite mongers is look somewhere else. Piniella is not his vintage volcano about to blow. Wife Anita has mandated he calm down. More interesting stuff is available every day from a thousand originating points. If the producers are waiting on Sweet Lou, they might have a long vigil.