Cubs Relievers Better Get Used To Piniella

Reporting on baseball is hard. Relatively speaking, anyway. Compared to, say, living under Taliban rule, reporting baseball is, like, super easy. Compared to sitting in your house and blogging, like we do, reporting on baseball is pretty tough. It's all relative.

But what we mean when we say baseball is tough is that there's not a lot, day-to-day, to write about. Baseball games happen, and despite the meaning we always assign to our most recent observations, each day is just 1/162nd of the season. Pretty small potatoes, right?

Which is why you sometimes end up with stories like this: Not exactly groundbreaking or vital, but interesting enough that they get you by for a day when there's not much actual news to report. Yes, it's about how the Cubs' new relievers are adjusting to dealing with Lou Piniella, and as much as we don't envy the sports reporters forced to grind this stuff out on a daily basis, we're doubly ambivalent towards having to close for a guy like Lou.

At the same time, when you strip Lou's eccentricities away, you get a manager who has an almost uncanny way with pitchers, especially relievers. He is no nonsense, but at the same time, he understands the luck inherent in the game -- he minds less if you give up a hit than if you walk a batter, because at least you made the batter do something, right? It's a small thing, but it's one of those traits that build and build until you get Lou Piniella, Cubs Manager, and his success in that role thus far.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.