Sweet & Lou

"Do You mind if I smoke?"

No.

"You sure it doesn't bother you?"

Yes, I'm sure.

He lights up, 9:30 in the morning, then lights another one in its wake, like a three-pack-a-day man. He talks. He lights up. He smokes.

Anita, his wife of 34 years, a gorgeous lady who knows him inside out, is astonished when she hears this. " Lou smoked?" she asks. "He didn't smoke around the house all winter."

But this is the official start of another season. It all changes with the Super Bowl. That's the signal that life is going to flip, that spring training is around the corner. I'm the first robin—the opening interview. It's time for Lou Piniella to be the manager of the Seattle Mariners again, to "deal with the media," time to start smoking again. "I think I can quit," he says, "but truly, I know I can't."

Not as long as you're managing?

He nods, ruefully.

The wintertime is when Anita actually knows Lou. "Really," she says, "we've only been married 17 years." She means only the off-seasons count. The rest of the year, the baseball, is something else again. For a long time Piniella, the singles hitter, held square nine-to-five jobs in the off-season, like any working stiff. In Kansas City one winter he sold the municipal bonds that would fund the baseball park he would play in during the summer. Other years he was the area rep for Chris Evert's tennis fashion line. Fans think all the money is what has changed players. More to the point, it's that they no longer have to work real jobs in the off-season. Now, all year, they're out of touch with the daily ebb and flow of reality.