Lou Piniella Is Starting To Lose It

You might be the most die-hard Cubs fan in the world, but you don't see them as much as Lou Piniella sees them. Maybe you watch every game. So does Lou. Except Lou's there for workouts, batting practice, team meetings, and the rest of it. When the frustration boils, you can turn off your TV; Lou has to sit in the dugout and watch.

Which is why you get explosions like last night's, in which Piniella chided his players like an angry parent dealing with an irresponsible teenager.

''Well, they're going to have to find them,'' manager Lou Piniella told the Chicago Sun-Times. ''They're going to have to find the answers on the field. That's really the bottom line. It sounds cruel. It sounds harsh. But it's reality.''

''We just really did nothing,'' Piniella said of the finish to a 4-4 road trip that included three walkoff losses, the last two by 2-1 scores. ''Did nothing. And when we had chances, we were swinging at bad pitches out of the zone and can't make contact. Come on, this is major-league baseball. I know the game isn't the easiest in the world to play, because I played it for a long time. But it's not this damn hard. Come on. It's not this hard.''

We can't exactly agree. Baseball is really, really hard. Remember how hard Little League was? We were OK at sports in general; we were awful at baseball. It's really tough to hit that little baseball when it comes at you so fast! Now imagine being a professional baseball player.

But of course Lou's right. For professional baseball players, playing professional baseball shouldn't be this hard. If you've produced at a nominal rate over the course of your career, you should be able to continue doing so, especially if you're being paid by the millions to do so. Right now, the Cubs suck. We're just glad we're not Lou Piniella, and we can turn off the TV when we feel like it.

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.