While I was away last week, Lou Piniella announced on Tuesday that he planned to retire after the season and on Wednesday Ralph Houk died.

Piniella and Houk worked for the same team, the Yankees, but never together. Houk managed his last game for the Yankees Sept. 30, 1973; they acquired Piniella in a trade about 10 weeks later, Dec. 7.

Piniella, however, wound up doing the exact same jobs in his Yankees career that Houk had done 20 or so years earlier. They were both players, coaches, managers and general managers.

They had something else in common: they both kicked a lot of dirt in their rages at umpires.

“Houk was a very accomplished dirt kicker; he helped make it an art form,” said Marty Appel, a former Yankees’ public relations director, who is writing a book about the Yankees.

I don’t recall that Houk ever yanked bases from their moorings and flung them around the field; that was a Piniella specialty. But Piniella never used the writers the way Houk did. I think, to his credit, he had too much respect for us to use us and abuse us.

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Zachary Kram is substituting for Murray Chass this Sunday.

As the initial beats of “Enter Sandman” fill Yankee Stadium, the frenzied crowd cheers wildly, secure in its knowledge that the immortal Mariano Rivera will finish off the win. No matter the opposing team or hitter at the plate, his routine and demeanor are always the same, his Hall of Fame cutter still working its magic and baffling hitters. This season, one Jason Kubel grand slam aside, Rivera has been just as untouchable as in years past, with a 0.98 ERA and twenty saves in 22 chances. As impressive as his year has been, however, other relief pitchers from across the majors have failed to follow suit and match his success.

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Commissioner Bud Selig was so adamant in his defense of his clubs that I was unable to get the word integrity into the conversation. Had I brought it up, he would have scoffed at the idea. But then, the commissioner has never acknowledged that the owners, of whom he was one, colluded against free agents in the 1980s.

Baseball’s integrity was on my mind because I suspect that teams like the San Francisco Giants have undermined it. These teams just don’t seem like they’re trying to win, or at least doing everything they can to win.

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