You enter a conversation with Lou Piniella ready to be entertained. Not necessarily surprised, though. The beloved longtime player and manager operates without much of a filter, so he has to work pretty hard to surprise you.
Nevertheless, Sweet Lou came through when I brought up the subject of his near-miss in last December’s Baseball Hall of Fame vote by the Today’s Game Committee.
“It was disappointing, truthfully. It really was,” Piniella said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “But it didn’t happen. All I can say is I was disappointed, nothing else. I was happy to see the people that got in, I really was.