The Cubs are horrible even when they should be good, but managed to do what many teams haven’t been able to do: Take the fun out of the game for Lou Piniella, as “Sweet” Lou announced that this season will be his last as a major league manager, retiring after 18 years as a player and 22 as a manager.
“It’s been a wonderful experience,” he said. “There’s no way that I won’t cherish the memories here.”
There’s why they call him “Sweet”. He’s a liar though. Lou did the best he could in his tenure as Cubs manager, but jesus man: Milton Bradly, Carlos Zambrano, all the sucking…it had to have been frustrating as hell for someone who was one hell of a player and a great manager for so long to put up with crap like that.
“I’m proud of our accomplishments during my time here and this will be a perfect way for me to end my career,” he said. “But let me make one thing perfectly clear: Our work is far from over. I want to keep the momentum going more than anything else and win as many games as we can to get back in this pennant race.”
Translation: “It’s over. I mean it’s no “over”, but it’s over. You can’t say it’s over though, even if it is. It’s totally over though.”
We always loved Lou Piniella as a manager. Kicking stuff, throwing stuff, yelling at people. Guy was freaking great and we have to admit that when the Cubs hired him we were more than a little worried. If anyone had the balls to scream and kick the loser out of these under-achieving Cubs, it was Lou. Alas, eventually even the mighty Lou Piniella, childhood friend of our very own Tony LaRussa, was broken by the craptasticness that is the Cubs.