Lou Piniella was adamant on Thursday that he didn't push Mark DeRosa out of Chicago. "I never had a problem," he said. "I liked the guy on the team. So did Jim (Hendry). So did everybody. Look, sometimes you have to do things you really don't want to do, but you do them." DeRosa replied "I don't know" when the question was posed to him by a Sun-Times columnist in an article that suggested the two never "hit it off." "How can they say that? That I didn't 'hit it off' with him?" Piniella asked. "Is that how he felt? I had nothing but respect for Mark. He played exceedingly well. I used him all over. I think he had his best season playing for me. "I don't call players after they're traded. I don't make a habit of that. I talk to them when I see them in spring and the following summer. When I leave, nobody calls and tells me that 'I feel bad that you're not managing the team,' or whatever. Look, this is a situation where the move had to be made. I saw it on the ticker tape in Colorado while I was skiiing. "There's so much payroll that you can have on a major league team. And the decision was made. They got three young pitchers for him. The thing about players, whether they're traded or whatever -- a manager is a manager. He manages what he has on the team. Sometimes you have to do things that you don't want to to do. But I never had any problems with him. I told their bullpen coach the other day to tell (Cleveland manager) Eric Wedge, 'No trips to Tucson for (DeRosa).'"