“Piniella is a case. He hits the hell out of the ball. He hit a three-run homer today and he’s got a .400 average, but they’re easing him out. He complains a lot about the coaches and ignores them when he feels like it, and to top it off he’s sensitive as hell to things like Joe Schultz not saying good morning to him. None of this is supposed to count when you judge a ballplayer’s talents. But it does.”
- Jim Bouton on Lou’s spring with the Pilots in Ball Four
At the end of the 1968 baseball season Lou Piniella was 25 years old and had been in professional baseball for seven years.