One Friday 14 years ago when I lived in West Tampa, I visited the tiny building on Howard Avenue that serves as that neighborhood’s post office.

In the mail, I had received an early 1970s Lou Piniella baseball card from a trade I had worked out. Since I lived on Cordelia Street at the time, I’d pass by Piniella’s childhood home at the corner of Cordelia and Habana Avenue on the way home.

As luck would have it, Piniella’s parents were having a yard sale that day, so I parked and looked around. I approached Lou’s mother, Margaret Piniella, and handed her the card.

“Recognize this guy?” I asked.

“That’s my Looou-iee,” she squealed with delight and pride.

We chatted for a few minutes (no, none of Lou’s boyhood stuff was for sale), and Mrs. Piniella told me about the scrapbooks she had kept on her son since his childhood days, faithfully following his sports career from the streets of West Tampa to the major leagues. When she tried to give the scrapbooks to Lou, Margaret said he waved them off.

“Mom, save it for the grandkids and their kids,” he told her. “I’ve seen it all already.”

Piniella certainly has seen plenty during his career as a player and manager, and Melissa Isaacson alternates between scrapbook-like wistfulness and crackling intensity in her biography of the Tampa native, “Sweet Lou: Lou Piniella: A Life in Baseball” (Triumph Books, $24.95) .

Isaacson, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, is no stranger to Florida, writing for Florida Today and the Orlando Sentinel during her early sportswriting career. She has done her homework, interviewing Piniella’s family members and friends, classmates and coaches from his Tampa youth — people like Mondy Flores, Carmine Iavarone (unfortunately, spelled two different ways in the book), Tony Gonzalez and Paul Ferlita.

“When I left, I felt like I had a new set of uncles,” Isaacson wrote in her introduction, and she understood what those friends meant when they said that “Lou’s Lou.”

It’s not “Manny being Manny.” “Lou’s Lou” is said “with the highest regard for the man, for his complexity, his quirkiness, his integrity, and yes, his sentimentality,” Isaacson writes. “And there is a lot of that.”

Former Tampa Tribune sports editor/columnist Tom McEwen’s (spelled “McEwan” in some references), adds some perspective. Columnist Joe Henderson, whose name was spelled correctly throughout the book, contributes stories gleaned from his position as the Tribune’s national baseball writer during the 1990s.

Even though Piniella managed in New York, Cincinnati (where he managed the Reds to a World Series title in 1990), Seattle and now for the Chicago Cubs, there is a definite Tampa feel to this book. And while the subject is Sweet Lou, Isaacson is not syrupy in her writing. She gives full attention to the controversies that have followed Piniella, the run-ins with players (Rob Dibble and Ben Grieve are featured prominently), umpires and management.
She probably pays too much attention to the Grieve incident, but uses it to demonstrate how Piniella wears his emotions on his sleeve.

Players who did not like Piniella’s style, like Jeff Cirillo, also are given a platform, and Grieve also gets to tell his side of the story.

Other than a sprinkling of typos, a few misspelled names and a persistent reference to the Tampa Devil Rays (not Tampa Bay), this book is an accurate, fair reading of a fine baseball player and an even better manager.

Favorite story from the book? It’s when Piniella’s basketball coach at the University of Tampa criticized him after an ineffective half, questioning his credentials as an All-American prep star.

“You can’t be so smart either,” Piniella yelled back. “You recruited me.”

That’s Tampa’s Looou-iee.