The Real McCoy

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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy is in his 37th year of covering the Cincinnati Reds, the longest tenure for any active writer covering one team. Counting spring training and postseason games, McCoy has covered more than 7,000 major-league baseball games, written close to 18,000 baseball stories and eaten enough hot dogs to give Babe Ruth indigestion.

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July 2009

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Home > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > August > 19 > Entry

Some memories from Sweet Lou

By Hal McCoy | Tuesday, August 19, 2008, 04:03 PM

Was walking down a side street off Michigan Avenue shortly after noon Tuesday, about to turn into my hotel, when somebody yelled, “Hal, Hal!”

Looked up and strolling down the sidewalk was Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella. Amazingly, nobody recognized him, nobody stopped him for a chat or an autograph and nobody interrupted us as we stood on the sidewalk for five minutes talking baseball.

Sweet Lou. Love the guy. My all-time favorite out of the ga-zillion (actually 16) managers I’ve covered in Cincinnati in my 36 years.

Piniella, of course, was the last (1990) to take the team to a World Series championship.

And I know there are a lot of Cub-haters out there, but with the Reds wallowing in their own mediocrity, I’m rooting hard for the Cubs, just because of Lou.

I mean, the guy is so comfortable with himself he wasn’t afraid to ask a writer, me, when he took over the Reds, “Hal, what does this team need the most?”

I told him, “A leadoff hitter.”

Halfway through the season he came up to me and said, “You were absolutely right. That was our biggest need.” That’s when Piniella made Barry Larkin his leadoff hitter.

Piniella stories are legend - many of them well-known, including his base-tossing tirade in Cincinnati and his clubhouse wrestling match with Rob Dibble.

I was witness to them all, many of which I’ve already related in this space.

I’ve never known a man who hates to lose more than Piniella. Nobody likes to lose, but Lou takes every loss personally and it is as if there is a big ‘L’ emblazoned on his face after it happens.

In San Diego, the clubhouse guy used to have a large bucket big enough to ice down four or five bottles of beer for a manager’s post-game consumption, if he so wished.

One night after a tough loss, as the writers walked into his office, Lou was behind his desk with a sheepish grin and said, “Watch the ice, guys.”

He had kicked the bucket, so to speak, splattering ice all over his office floor, so much that it looked as if a hockey game was about to start.

Another time, for some reason somebody had put a huge plastic bubble (as big as a beach ball) full of gum balls in his office. He never took a single gum ball out of the container, just let it squat in his office.

Another tough loss. Another sly Piniella grin after the game, “Watch the gum balls, guys,” he said. The floor was covered with literally hundreds of gum balls, with a shattered plastic container strewn among the multi-colored gum balls.

I’ve told this one, but it is my favorite.

Dibble was his closer and there was a situation for him to close. Dibble didn’t close and when I asked Dibble why he said, “Go ask the manager.”

So I did. And Lou said, “He told me before the game his arm was a bit sore and he wasn’t available.”

So I returned to Dibble and told him what Piniella said and Dibble screamed, “The manager is a liar.”

So I trudged back into Lou’s office and said, “Your closer just called you a liar.”

Piniella flattened me against his office door and he sprinted to the clubhouse, jumped on Dibble and the fight was on. Pitcher Tim Belcher broke it up but he wasn’t gung-ho about it - either afraid to get hurt or happy that Piniella had the upper hand over Dibble.

Ah, sweet memories from Sweet Lou. If and when I do my book, there are a couple of X-rated stories I’ll include, one involving an interview with a guy from a Christian radio station in Cincinnati. It’s classic.

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