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It’s usually forgotten these days, but new Cubs manager Lou Piniella has a cameo in one of the most important baseball books ever written. He turns up in the early pages of Jim Bouton‘s Ball Four–in fact, in the first actual diary entry of Bouton’s account of the 1969 season. That spring saw Marvin Miller lead the first players’ strike at the start of training camp. The disruption was short, the gains minimal by today’s standards, but it was the first baby steps in a labor movement that has seen baseball players form the most powerful union in any sport. Anyway, Bouton was one of the de facto player reps on the expansion Seattle Pilots, and after attending a union meeting in New York was assigned to call a few of the new Pilots to tell them what was going on. Piniella, then slated to be a rookie–if he made the team–was one of his players.