Lou Piniella- the Player

A Clutch Hitter with a Will to Win

To understand Lou Piniella the manager, one must look at how he played the game of baseball. Piniella, recently named manager of the Chicago Cubs, was a hard-nosed outfielder who began his playing days with the expansion Royals and then went to the New York Yankees. He was skippered by such old school types as Billy Martin, Alvin Dark, and Hank Bauer, and Lou Piniella knows how to play baseball only one way, and that is to win. Lou Piniella was a line drive hitter with occasional power who seemed to come up big at the plate when everything was on the line, but oddly enough it was a defensive play that his fans may remember him for best.

Born in Tampa, Florida in 1943, Lou Piniella attended Jesuit High School and then Tampa University, where he played baseball. Lou was chosen by the Indians in the free agent amateur draft of 1962, but was then selected by the Senators in the expansion draft later that year. The Senators had Piniella still in their farm system when they dealt him to the Orioles in 1964, in one of those "player to be named later" trades. Piniella played in only four games for the Orioles in '64 and went back down into the minors, from where he was traded in 1966, back to the Indians. The merry-go-round continued as Piniella, who appeared in just a couple contests with the Tribe in 1968, was selected as the 28th pick of the 1969 expansion draft by the Seattle Pilots. Piniella, who in a strange twist would "pilot" the Seattle Mariners as their manager many years later, never played an inning for the fledgling team, as they traded him to the Royals before opening day of 1969.