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May 11--Dealing with Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen can be hysterical and it can be maddening. For one thing, the profanities come through loud and clear but his speedy broken English can be hard to pick up at times. For another, once you figure out what Guillen is saying, it can be downright outlandish.
He became a media darling during the 2005 postseason but his latest rants show the other side of Ozzie: Win and spout off, and you're considered colorful. Lose and keep spouting and you're just an obnoxious buffoon.
Guillen has
spent the last week backing out of a corner again after he ranted before a game in Toronto about how the Cubs remain the darlings of Chicago even though they haven't won a World Series in 100 years and the White Sox just did it in 2005. Guillen mentioned how the bomb-filled 1983 tirade of ex-Cubs manager Lee Elia had a huge 25th anniversary celebration while it wouldn't have seemed so cuddly coming from the Sox.
Because it was shown over and over on ESPN (enough already!), the Guillen tirade got most of the attention last week. But folks in Chicago bristled more when they learned the White Sox had set up a pair of naked blow-up female dolls in the Rogers Centre clubhouse as a way to get the curse off their struggling bats, which had produced just nine runs in one recent six-game stretch.
Guillen, remember, was advised to get sensitivity training when he unleashed a homophobic rant against a Chicago columnist two years ago. So GM Kenny Williams was not pleased with the doll controversy, which instantly drew rebukes from organizations such as the Association for Women in Sports Media.
"If people think we did something wrong, wow. I'm not going to apologize," Guillen said. "I'm not going to say that I'm sorry. . . . As soon as I [apologize], that means I'm guilty of something. I'm not. I'm not guilty."
Guillen was at his ribald best again before Thursday's game against the Twins, insisting that he's just giving the media -- and fans -- what they want.
"Who's the manager they remember the most? Billy Martin. They don't remember Sparky Anderson," Guillen said. ". . . They remember Billy Martin because he was the crazy one. Why do you think they like Lou Piniella? Because Lou is good? Great guy. Great baseball people. But people like Lou Piniella because he's bleeped up."
Wonder how Guillen's act plays with umpires? Not very well. He was tossed by Phil Cuzzi during his team's home opener last month and made the dangerous accusation that the umpire was carrying a vendetta from an ejection of Guillen last July in New York.
"I don't like that guy," Guillen said. "I don't like him as a person or as an umpire. And I'm going to let him know. He don't like me, I don't like him. If you don't like me as a man and what I do, I respect that. But if you don't like me, and all of a sudden you're going to take it out on my players, you're wrong. That's unprofessional."
Cuzzi brushed off the remarks by telling a Chicago pool reporter he simply called strikes that were strikes but an unnamed member of his crew had the zinger many folks around the game are saying: "Tell Ozzie to drink some decaf."
