As pointed out earlier in these pages, MLB players do not express any strong desire to play for the men managing the teams of our fair city. Ozzie Guillen, as expected, doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks of him, which seems about what you’d expect out of the man who once promised to run naked down Michigan Avenue should his team win the World Series. Across town, Lou Piniella tells the Sun-Times he takes the snub “as a compliment,” which also seems right considering Lou’s old-school demeanor and generally well-liked off-field persona.

With Ozzie, you generally expect outsiders to show reluctance towards working for him. Consider the language, the abrasiveness, the borderline racism and the public hostility towards his players and it’s easy to empathize with a player’s Guillen aversion. But with Lou, the question has to be re-framed. He may not go to war with you, may not run off his mouth about what a lousy job the general manager is doing, but perhaps with Lou it’s less a question of what he will do than one of what he won’t do. Consider:

1986, New York: Piniella leads Don Mattingly, Rickey Henderson, Dave Winfield to second place.
1990, Cincinnati: Handed the keys to a recently-disgraced Pete Rose’s team, Piniella guides the Reds to World Series victory over the heavily-favored Oakland A’s. The champs finish the following season in fifth place.
1995, Seattle: Following a glorious late-season drive and a dramatic one-game playoff against the Angels, Piniella’s Mariners, anchored by Tino Martinez, Joey Cora, Ken Griffey, Jr., Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner and Randy Johnson, lose the ALCS to the eventual World Series loser Cleveland Indians.
1997, Seattle: The Mariners, taking their existing team and inserting a hot-hitting shortstop named Alex Rodriguez, take the AL West only to lose in the ALDS to the Baltimore Orioles.
2000, Seattle: Earning a wild-card berth thanks to Martinez, Rodriguez, John Olerud, and a pair of young pitchers in Freddy Garcia and Gil Meche, the M’s sweep the White Sox before losing to the Yankees in the ALCS.
2001, Seattle: The greatest regular-season performance of all time, 116-46, is rendered useless after Piniella’s team is again taken down in the ALCS by the Yankees.
2003-2005, Tampa Bay: Definitely not his fault, but those were some ugly years all the same.
2007, Chicago: Eighty-five wins are somehow enough to take the NL Central. Eighty-five wins also show just enough Cubbie swagger to earn a first-round sweep at the hands the Diamondbacks.
2008, Chicago: It’s gonna happen! And you know what? It did.

So maybe the problem with playing for Lou has absolutely nothing to do with Lou at all, but plenty to do with the end result of playing for Lou. Letdown. Disappointment. Heartbreak. Sorrow. All the great baseball in the world that, in the end, was played for no reason at all.

Or, you know, maybe no one really has an opinion on the Manny Actas and A.J. Hinches of the world.