Lou

For OVER fifty years, Lou Piniella has been a fixture in Major League Baseball, making a name for himself first as a player on the legendary New York Yankees of the 1970s and later as a manager for five different teams: the Yankees, the Reds, the Mariners, the Rays, and the Cubs.

Now, in this raucous and entertaining memoir, Piniella opens up about his lifetime in the game, telling never-before-heard stories about electrifying wins, painful losses, and why sometimes your only option is to get in an umpire’s face. Tracing his baseball life from its journeyman beginnings in the minors, he discusses how he came of age as a player during the wild years of the Bronx Zoo, when personalities like Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Catfish Hunter, and Billy Martin made the Yankee locker room the most controversial and colorful place in baseball. With surprising  candor, he details his close yet often contentious reltionship with George Steinbrenner, offering a unique portrait of one of the game’s most provocative figures, a man who mentored and supported Lou as a player and a manager while ultimately making life with the Yankees unsustainable for him. 

Stormy as his time in New York was, it was only the start of Lou’s fiery career. From managing the Cincinnati Reds and their divisive owner, Marge Schott, to a World Series win, to transforming the perennially cellar-dwelling Seattle Mariners into one of the league’s best teams, he recalls his experiences—both hilarious and heartbreaking—with some of the brightest stars from the last twenty-five years, including Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Ichiro Suzuki. For the first time, Lou also describes his important but little-known friendship with Alex Rodriguez, sharing how they formed a connection early in Alex’s time with Seattle that spanned decades, teams, and scandals, as Lou  helped Alex through his most tumultuous episodes.

Whether facing the difficulties of managing his home team in Tampa Bay or helping the Cubs win back-to-back division championships, Lou brings an unforgettable and feisty voice to his rollercoaster ride of a career, going inside the fights, pranks, and seemingly impossible comebacks that defined every Lou Piniella team. Featuring a huge cast of Hall of Fame characters and uproarious stories from three generations of baseball, Lou offers a bridge to a rapidly disappearing era, a time when baseball was a bit more fun, when passion was a virtue, and when kicking a bit of dirt on an umpire was good for everyone.