Lou: Fifty Years of Kicking Dirt, Playing Hard, and Winning Big in the Sweet Spot of Baseball

Having played with a number of teams (including the 1977 and 1978 World Champion Yankees) and managed several others such as the Cincinnati Reds, Seattle Mariners, Tampa Bay Rays, and Chicago Cubs, Piniella has seen his share of triumphs and failures. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was famous for his hot-headedness, entertaining fans with memorable meltdowns. After his retirement from being a baseball commentator, Piniella now writes this debut with sportswriter Madden (Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball), sharing Piniella's unique story from his humble Florida upbringing to his current life as a grandparent. The book is a mostly straightforward chronological autobiography, with a few sections on Piniella's thoughts on the evolution of the game, controversies such as pitch counts and performance-enhancing drugs, and rankings of athletes he played with or managed. It may have made for a more engaging read to have these "Lou-Pinions," as he calls them, interspersed throughout the text instead of at the end.