YOU know why we need Lou Piniella back in the game? We need Lou Piniella back in the game because we need to educate a fresh generation of sports fans and athletes how to properly lose one’s temper. We need to show the Dr. Phil crowd that anger management isn’t necessary as long as manager angerment is done by a pro’s pro.
And Piniella is a pro’s pro in that category. So was Paul O’Neill. So was Billy Martin, and Earl Weaver, and Tommy Lasorda. So was Bill Musselman, rest his soul, and the old-school Bob Knight (before he became a cartoon) and all those football coaches (“He’s killing me, Whitey! He’s killing me!”) who made the classic NFL Films soundtracks more of a must-have than the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack.
What we’re seeing now is that people in sports simply don’t know how to get angry anymore, not without making complete horse’s asses of themselves anyway. The latest example, of course, is French superstar Zinedine Zidane (owner of the most wonderfully alliterative sports name since Ruben Boumtje Boumtje), who reacted to Italy Marco Materazzi’s alleged slurring of his sister and mother (which, we hope, was stronger than observing that they both wear combat boots) by headbutting Materazzi, getting himself red-carded out of last week’s World Cup final, maybe the greatest example of ill-timed Sonny Corleone behavior in a crowded stadium since Roger Clemens went off on Terry Cooney all those years ago in Oakland in the ALCS.
This came less than a month after Joe Mikulik, the manager of the Asheville Tourists, went into a full-blown Pesci rant during a game in Lexington, which may or may not have been inspired by an umpire telling Mikulik, “Hey, Joe, you’re pretty funny,” and Mikulik saying, “Funny? Like a clown?” and the resulting implosion was a regular on the sports wraparound shows for a few days, one of the most arresting public meltdowns since that Buddhist monk lit himself on fire back in the ’60s.
The first 10 seconds of that clip were pretty funny, same as it would have been funny to see Zidane take one of those half-hearted athlete swings at Materazzi, but what we got instead, from both of them, after that initial 10 was a further reinforcement of something that’s been bothersome for a long time.
No one knows how to blow their stacks any more.
Time was, we celebrated athletes who showed a little fire.
We still get a kick out of Yogi Berra jumping out of his shin guards after Jackie Robinson stole home on him in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series. Actually, if you ask Yogi to this day about that play, he’ll give you the same reaction, and he’s 81 years old now.
Yogi came from a time when you were allowed to get angry, and knew where to draw the line.
Martin, of course, knew how to get angry. Sure, he crossed a line sometimes.
OK, so he spent most of his sober hours over that line. But you never once got the sense that he would ever so completely lose it that he’d become a staple of youtube.com. Same with O’Neill, who used to go through water coolers the way the young Tyson went through bum-of-themonth pugs, and Knight, who before he threw that chair was a master of working referees so completely that you knew, you just knew, that he’d buy his team a tight call when they really needed it late in a game.
It’s hard to say just when we stopped learning how to be angry as sportsmen, but I think a lot of the blame has to go to what we should just call the “Jeterization” of sports. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Derek Jeter has been playing baseball in the big leagues for parts of 12 seasons now, and that’s long enough that millions – literally millions – of baseball players from Little League to high school to college to the low minors have emulated everything about him. His batting stance. His inside-out swing. The way he tosses his bat aside. His throwing motion. His patented run-into-the-hole-and-leap-and-fire move.
And his decorum. Look, there’s nothing wrong with that. And in Jeter’s case, it’s simply a natural extension of who he is.
You get the genuine sense that Country Joe West could call Jeter out on strikes with the bases loaded of Game 7 of the World Series on a ball that bounced twice before reaching the catcher and Jeter would steam silently back to the dugout and start blaming himself for not properly protecting the plate.
It’s who he is. But it’s not who most everyone else is. Most everyone else would want to invite Country Joe out to the parking lot. But when you repress those feelings day after day, week after week, unnaturally . . . well, when the time comes and you can’t hold them in any longer, you wind up head-butting someone. Or you start stalking umpires like an escapee from the Cuckoo’s Nest. Yes, we need Lou Piniella back in the game. We need someone to show the world it’s not only OK to pop a vein every now and again, but good for you, too.
Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com.
His Yankees-Red Sox book, “Emperors and Idiots,” is available in paperback at bookstores everywhere.
VAC’S WHACKS
If almost getting his hand splintered into a thousand pieces – and nearly shattering the Mets’ championship ambitions into a million pieces – doesn’t keep Jose Reyes (or anyone else for that matter) from diving head-first into first base ever again, then nothing ever will.
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Looking for a great baseball beach read? Alex Belth’s “Stepping Up,” a wonderful tale about Curt Flood, is a splendid reminder that once upon a time, athletes really did stand for more than the bottom line of their contract.
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If Rod Thorn vs. Isiah were a slo-pitch softball game, we would already have invoked the 10-run mercy rule. And that was before the team that desperately needed Marcus Williams passed on him, and the team that already has a Hall of Fame point guard picked him.
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Now that Sidney Ponson is in pinstripes, can Rafael Palmeiro be far behind?
