FanHouse

Everyone's favorite cranky manager, Lou Piniella, had a bit of a dust-up this week when asked a relatively innocuous question by a radio reporter. Asked if he considered taking Alfonso Soriano out of the lineup and inserting someone less likely to embarass himself in the outfield, Pineilla kindly reiterated that he was not stupid, and then mumbled his way out of the press conference. It was, like almost all things Lou Piniella, totally awesome.

Today, Piniella explains himself, and comes up with some pretty solid media juggles that Chicago's top two papers might consider:

"It's like me asking, 'On Sunday, with the Sun-Times, take (columnist Jay) Mariotti out. He's not writing a column today,'" Piniella said. "Or, 'Put the third subordinate behind him. Or doing it with (the Tribune) with (baseball columnist Phil) Rogers, (telling the sports editor) 'Don't use Rogers on Sunday. Use the third guy.' You'd look at me like I'm stupid, you know what I'm saying?"

In other words, like Mariotti and Rogers at their respective papers, Soriano is an untouchable who deserves to be in the lineup.

Whether Lou knows it or not, he just called for the removal of two of Chicago's least favorite columnists. Maybe Piniella is a blogger, after all. Though, to be fair, he seems decidedly undedicated to cruelty; he'll have to work on that if he wants to help us contribute to the downfall of society.