PEORIA, Ariz. — A half hour before Monday’s exhibition game at Peoria Stadium, the lines were blurred.
Mariners fans joined Cubs fans, Seattle media gathered with Chicago reporters, and Mariners coaches and Cubs coaches all got together in one place in front of and behind the first-base dugout.
Lou Piniella was in the house again, and his presence created a pregame buzz that’s rare at a spring training game.
Piniella, the former Mariners manager who begins his second season with the Cubs, seemed as happy back in Peoria as his old friends and fans were to see him.
He walked into the stadium greeted by chants of “Louuuu!” from fans wearing both Mariners and Cubs shirts and hats.
Once he reached the Cubs’ dugout, reporters converged.
“My first thought when I got here was, ‘My gosh has this area grown,’” said Piniella, who managed the Mariners from 1993-2002. “There are buildings all over the place now. It has really grown. It brings back good memories. This is a great complex to play in. It’s a wonderful place for spring training.”
It wasn’t always that way.
Peoria Stadium hadn’t been completed by Piniella’s first spring training in 1993 and the Mariners played their entire exhibition schedule on the road.
That was a dismal spring, beginning with a 10-game losing streak.
“After we’d lost five or six games, I told (pitching coach) Sammy Ellis to take me to the airport so I could go home,” Piniella said. “But we finished .500 that first spring.”
Then they built memories under Piniella — the 1995 Refuse to Lose run to the playoffs, division championships in 1997 and 2001, and another playoff team in 2000.
Monday’s pregame scene was a makeshift reunion of those teams.
Piniella and two of his coaches, first-base coach Matt Sinatro and hitting coach Gerald Perry, exchanged handshakes and hugs with M’s manager John McLaren, Sam Perlozzo, Norm Charlton, Lee Elia, Jay Buhner and Rich Amaral, along with broadcasters Dave Niehaus and Rick Rizzs.
“We all have such history, we’re all so close,” said McLaren, who begins his first season as a manager after 37 years in pro baseball.
Piniella said he always hoped McLaren would get a chance to manage and he believes he’ll win with the Mariners.
“He’s a good baseball guy and he surrounded himself with good baseball people,” Piniella said. “He should be very successful here and I hope he is.”
He called the Mariners a team capable of reaching the playoffs, just as he considers the Cubs a contender.
When someone mentioned the possibility of a Cubs-Mariners World Series, a familiar twinkle returned to Piniella’s eyes.
“Wouldn’t that be nice? I’d like that,” he said. “I think both teams are going into the season with realistic chances of going into the postseason. If you can get lucky, why not?”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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