Phil Arvia: Lou gets 'a little animated' after Game 1

For the record, as Carlos Marmol entered Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Wednesday night, I raised an eyebrow in the direction of the colleague to my left.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Here's your (deleted) column," he said.

<p class="MsoNormal">So Lou Piniella was not entirely correct in his third-guessing of some of the second-guessing he endured after the opener at Chase Field.

<p class="MsoNormal">"The people who write it write it after the fact," he said Thursday.

<p class="MsoNormal">Sure, I wrote it after the fact. But I thought it before the fact.

<p class="MsoNormal">Piniella was still thinking about it in a truly entertaining dugout filibuster I'd call a rant, if not for Piniella's insistence, "I'm not irritated. It seems -- I get a little animated. But I'm not irritated because I understand. I've been doing this a long time, you know? And basically, it's just win baby. We don't care how. Just win."

<p class="MsoNormal">The Cubs had better win. Witness team president John McDonough's analysis of their import in a USA Today story this week:

<p class="MsoNormal">"I don't want to sound presumptuous and say what's good for the Cubs is good for baseball," McDonough said presumptuously but correctly. "But from a TV ratings standpoint, it's seismic. The Cubs are a significant attraction. Everyone, it seems, can relate to us."

<p class="MsoNormal">Hmm. Wonder how TBS would relate to a Rockies-Diamondbacks NLCS?

<p class="MsoNormal">Sign-watching

<p class="MsoNormal">It was a good night for signs at the park Thursday. One Cub fan weighed in with the succinctly on point, "Got Swagger?" Another channeled the Will Ferrell vehicle, "Old School," on his placard reading, "You're My Boy, Lou!"

<p class="MsoNormal">But my favorite? A D-Backs fan went with something equal parts commentary, putdown and psychoanalysis: "Constantly Using Boring Scapegoat story."

<p class="MsoNormal">Piniella must have missed that one.

<p class="MsoNormal">Piniella invoked the goat while poking fun at the reaction to his decision to replace Carlos Zambrano in the seventh inning Wednesday. Zambrano had thrown only 85 pitches through six.

<p class="MsoNormal">"How many people have wanted me to close with Marmol, all right?" Piniella said. "I bring in Marmol, it's like the goat left his grave, right? Like Leo Durocher turned in his grave. I mean, for God's sake, it's only Game 1. We've got a five-game series here."

<p class="MsoNormal">I feel you, Lou. But what the heck does Durocher, who hasn't managed the Cubs for 35 years and been dead for nearly 16, have to do with anything?

<p class="MsoNormal">Hoping for rain?

<p class="MsoNormal">Because of a slight chance of rain, the game was played with the Chase Field roof closed -- even though the telescoping structure, powered by two 200-horsepower motors and containing 9 million pounds of structural steel, can be opened or closed in a zippy 4 1/2 minutes.

<p class="MsoNormal">The Cubs weren't about to complain.

<p class="MsoNormal">"Guys say the ball carries better when it's closed," Ryan Theriot said a couple of hours before Game 2. "I don't hit it far enough to know one way or the other."

<p class="MsoNormal">The roof was open for Game 1. Theriot said the Cubs' previous visit to Phoenix, in August, was conducted in its entirety with the roof closed.

<p class="MsoNormal">He noticed the difference on Aramis Ramirez's warning track flyouts to right in the fourth and the eighth.

<p class="MsoNormal">"I thought at least one of them was out," he said.

<p class="MsoNormal">If the Cubs come back for a Game 5, Theriot hopes rain is in the forecast again.

<p class="MsoNormal">"I like it closed because it's so much more consistent," he said. "If it was up to me, I'd want it closed all the time."

<p class="MsoNormal">Lou won't talk about luck

<p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps Piniella's biggest problem in L'affaire du Zambrano was his initial contention that the pitcher was slated to throw in the neighborhood of 100 pitches.

<p class="MsoNormal">"We planned for him to go six innings," he said. "Usually six innings for Carlos is 100, 105 pitches. He did it in 85. "

<p class="MsoNormal">If you ask me, Piniella had a bad game Wednesday. But I asked former big league manager Buck Martinez, now an analyst for ESPN Radio, for his opinion:

<p class="MsoNormal">"He had bad luck, because Carlos Marmol had been great all year long. Marmol was so shutdown good all year long, Lou felt, 'If we can't win with our bullpen, then we're not going to win.'"

<p class="MsoNormal">Piniella didn't care to dissect the difference between a bad game and bad luck.

<p class="MsoNormal">"I've been doing this for a long time, so I've had a hell of a lot more good games than I've had bad games, OK?"

<p class="MsoNormal">Agreed. But what Piniella had Thursday was the best description of his job I've ever heard.

<p class="MsoNormal">"When you're a major league manager, what it amounts to is you manage a ballgame for 2 1/2 hours and it takes you almost that long to explain what the hell you do."