Sean Deveney

Brace yourself. This is heresy. Repeat after us: Lou Piniella, new Cubs manager, is a genius. That's right, a baseball managing genius. It's only spring training, we know. But by the end of this season, he's going to prove it.

Now, Piniella knows what you're thinking -- there's that image of him, eyes bulging, jaw bouncing, steam shooting out of his ears like Daffy Duck going after some deth-pick-abull umpire. Or one of him shot putting first base. Or slamming his cap and going Vinatieri on it. To many, that's Piniella, and it's difficult to imagine genius flowing from such volatility. Imagine Einstein writing E=mc2 on a blackboard, then kicking chalk dust on anyone who disagreed.

Pshaw, Lou says. "Am I saint?" he asks. "Obviously not. But every time a writer writes about me, it's mentioned — I am fiery and I blow my stack. I don't understand that. There's a little history there, I know that. Where there's a little smoke, there's a little fire, right?

"But it bothers me that other managers are always described different. Take my friend Tony La Russa, who I grew up with. He is studious. He is strategic. Me, it's always: 'He's fiery and temperamental.' I have been kicked out of 57 games as a player and a manager. Bobby Cox does that in, what, two seasons? And he's a great manager."

So let's settle it. Piniella, too, is a great manager. He has won a World Series and enters this season with 1,519 victories and a .517 winning percentage over 19 years. Piniellan theatrics may obscure his accomplishments, but don't be fooled. There's intelligence in his occasional insanity. Phillies general manager Pat Gillick, Piniella's boss in Seattle when the Mariners won a record-tying 116 games in 2001, says he succeeds, in part, because of those eruptions.

"Lou is one of the best on-field managers I've ever had, from both a strategy standpoint and a motivation standpoint," Gillick says. "There's an intensity, but he makes sure that intensity transfers to his players."

Sure, Piniella flopped in his last job with the young Devil Rays — his career winning percentage going in was .537 — but it's neither temper nor Tampa that has kept Piniella from acceptance in the genius club. It's bigger than Lou. It's a notion that no matter what you think of coaches in other sports, baseball managers simply can't be smart. La Russa, for one, carries a reputation for intellect, but even he inspires rolled eyes. As one writer noted during last year's World Series, "You can have La Russa and all the Sharpies in the world to fill out a lineup card. I'll take Pujols and his bat. Every time. Baseball manager is the most overhyped job in America."

Sad, really, to see this once-proud occupation so reduced in esteem. There are reasons. Matchup statistics and probabilities are readily available to fans, which robs the manager of his voodoo — gone are the days of Earl Weaver and his mysterious index cards. Meanwhile, traditional managerial tools eroded during baseball's steroids era. Who needs a hit-and-run when middle infielders mash 25 or 30 homers? Most damaging was the 2003 best-seller, Moneyball, in which A's manager Art Howe was portrayed as a puppet of general manager Billy Beane. Oakland's setup suggested — pretty convincingly — that the less a manager gets involved, the better.

Managers themselves are complicit in dismissing their intellects. Weaver once described his job: "For 162 games you try not to screw up all that smart stuff your organization did last December." Hall of Famer Sparky Anderson labeled managers "a necessary evil." Tigers manager Jim Leyland declared last year, "I ain't no genius," mangling the language as if to prove the point.

This is Piniella's universe, where even the sharpest managers prefer to play dunce (see Stengel, Casey). Thus, it's easier for the average fan to grasp Piniella as a base-chucking loon than what he is: an extraordinary manager. A genius even.

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It's about time managers were restored to the pantheon of coaching intelligence so often recognized in other sports. La Russa proved genius has a place in the dugout with last year's World Series champion Cardinals. Leyland (no matter what he says) showed genius in turning around the woebegone Tigers. Why not Lou?

Of course, Piniella picked a doozy of a place to prove his smarts. The past sits on Wrigley Field like a beached whale — heavy, immobile, attracting flies. It has been 99 years since the North Siders won a World Series and 62 years since they even played in one; plus, the Cubs were 66-96 last season. Piniella inherits a slightly insane and well-informed fan base that turned quickly on former manager Dusty Baker. More tangibly, Piniella has serious questions on the mound, where the bullpen is dodgy and the rotation is a soup of mediocrity after ace Carlos Zambrano.

Still, the Cubs committed to nearly $300 million in salary this winter, most notably adding Alfonso Soriano to an offense that includes Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez. On the first day of camp in Mesa, Ariz., Piniella walked into the Cubs' clubhouse and told his players this is the most talent he has ever managed. "I've never managed a team with a $100 million payroll before," Piniella says. "It's my job to utilize these guys right."

Your job is bigger than that, Lou. You need to use this final opportunity — at 63, Piniella says this job will be his last — to join the ranks of the studious. It's up to you to help restore prestige to thinking managers. The work of Leyland and La Russa was impressive, but just imagine how wise you'd look if you took the Cubs to the World Series.

You're a genius at what you do, Lou. Go prove it.