Anger Management More-Mature Piniella Finds Holding His Tongue Can Be Very Hard On His Lower Lip

Lou Piniella has no noticeable scars or gashes on his lower lip, which is surprising considering the punishment he must inflict on it.

“I’ve learned to bite my lip a lot; that’s what I’ve learned more than anything else,” the once tempestuous Piniella said, discussing his on-the-job training as a major-league manager.

“When there’s a problem, instead of letting my temper take the best of me, I bite my lip and I go home and I think about the problem. I think about the problem at breakfast the next morning. I think about the problem at lunchtime and then, if I feel the same way, I address it. But when I handle it, I’m thoroughly under control.”

Lou Piniella under control? Who would have thought it? No one who retains vivid images of an out-of-control Yankee player kneeling on the ground after sliding home and raging at the umpire’s out call. No one who recalls a manager racing out of the Yankees dugout, arms flailing, face contorted, to challenge a call at first.

When did the transformation occur? Did it have something to do with Jupiter being aligned with Mars? No, it came with his growth and development as a manager. Piniella, after all, began his 10th season as a manager on Sunday night when his Mariners participated in the earliest opening of a baseball season ever, playing the Chicago White Sox in Seattle.

After three years with the Yankees in two separate terms and three seasons in Cincinnati, the 52-year-old Piniella eclipses those tenures by managing the Mariners for the fourth season. As much as he likes being where he is and the people he works for, Piniella harbors a twinge of regret that his first managing job could not have been his last.

“I would have loved more than anything else in the world to manage a Yankees team to a world championship,” he said during an interview in his spring office in Peoria, Ariz.

“I really would have. And I think if I had stayed there, that would’ve been done. I honestly feel that way. But it didn’t happen so I had to go to Cincinnati and we had some success, and here in Seattle we’re starting to have some success.”

Piniella, whose Reds won the World Series in 1990, directed the Mariners last year to their first division championship in a stirring late-season run climaxed by a victory in a one-game playoff over California. Then the Mariners edged the Yankees in one of the most scintillating postseason series in recent memory.

The managing job Piniella executed was especially impressive considering that the Mariners played without their best player, Ken Griffey Jr., for half the season. When it was suggested to him that it was his best managing job, he countered the assessment by saying players make managers look good.

“The players have to perform,” he said. “I adhere to the feeling that the manager should let players have center stage. You stay in the background, you give them leadership, you give them confidence and you let them play. Those are the three things that I follow.”

But the rookie manager who was Piniella in 1986 with the Yankees most likely could not have pulled off the championship trick he did last year.

“I’m much more patient, I’m much more experienced and I handle situations a lot better,” Piniella said.

“I can turn my head on things I don’t like. I couldn’t do that in New York. I made mistakes not turning my head in New York on things. I thought when I first came in that the tough approach was the right approach. It really isn’t. I could’ve handled certain situations over there better. I recognize it. But the same way I might have been able to have more patience with things, sometimes an owner has to learn patience.”

Piniella laughed at the thought of George Steinbrenner being patient, but he was not being critical of the Yankees owner, a man he said he always will appreciate for two particular reasons.

When Piniella, who always had been underpaid, was nearing the end of his playing career, Steinbrenner gave him a three-year contract when, Piniella said, one year would have been sufficient and two would have been more than enough.

“I’m thankful every day for what he did,” Piniella said, “and I’ll never forget that as long as I live.

And then there was his first managing job, when he had no managing experience anywhere and only a year and a half of coaching experience. “What other owners in baseball,” Piniella said, “would have given a young outfielder with my personality an opportunity to manage a major-league baseball team, much less the New York Yankees, without going to the Triple-A level and learning my skills.”

Because he didn’t have the minor leagues as a training ground, Piniella learned the hard way. He traced the biggest change in him, handling players “the passive way as opposed to the combative way,” to the end of his tenure in Cincinnati.

“I have great respect for my players,” he said. “I’m very fair with them. I think I’m easy to play for, but I’m demanding. I want things done the right way. I want the players to play hard. I want them to feel that winning is the most important thing. We give people opportunities. I don’t mind playing young players, but I want to see young players perform. I’m not a developing manager in that sense. I give them chances, but I want to see performance. I like to win. Where I derive the most pleasure out of this job is winning.”

Piniella’s role in turning the Mariners into winners prompted ownership recently to extend his contract through 2000.

“But just because I have an extension through 2000,” he said, “my job is the same. We have to put a good product on field. It’s not a situation where, well, we didn’t do it this year, but I have security. I couldn’t do that. I think the organization recognizes it and that’s why I was extended.”

Neither the M’s nor the Reds might have had a chance to get Piniella as their manager if Steinbrenner hadn’t balked at letting him take the Blue Jays’ job in 1989.

“Soon after I got let go in New York,” Piniella said, “Toronto came after me. I was offered the job over there, but I had a personal services contract with George that superseded the managing contract, and George wouldn’t let me go because it was the same division.”

Not only did Steinbrenner have no patience, but he also had no desire to have Piniella embarrass him by going to Toronto and winning a World Series there.