Torborg's cooler head helped save passionate Guillen's career

Long before the inflatable dolls in the clubhouse, the profanity-laced tirade against critical Chicago fans and, yes, even before there was any 2005 White Sox World Series title, for Ozzie Guillen, there was a 2003 weekend in South Florida when any managerial hopes he harbored could have gone up in smoke. Not long after Florida fired Jeff Torborg in the Saturday Night Massacre, the deposed manager had just returned to his apartment when he received a telephone call from his livid third-base coach.

If Ozzie had left Florida with Jeff Torborg, would the White Sox still be waiting? (Getty Images)

Guillen, one of the coaches who hadn't been fired, was going to quit.

"No," Torborg told him. "Ozzie, you're going to manage someday. You can't do this now."

"Oh yes I can," Ozzie said. "If you're going, I'm going."

Life is fragile, and it turns on moments like this for people all over the world, every day. Had Guillen followed his heart instead of, eventually, his head back in '03, who's to say this wouldn't be the 91st year of the White Sox's World Series drought?

Who's to say Guillen would have even become a major league manager, period? Where would he be if he had quit that weekend?

"I might be back home in Venezuela," he said during a batting-practice conversation at Angel Stadium the other night. "I don't know what I would be doing.

"At that particular time, it was hard for me because he's the guy who gave me my opportunity."

We all have guys who gave us an opportunity, somewhere along the line. And when things turn for the worse for them, what do you do? You learn a lot about a person in moments like those.

Some of us are schmoozers and climbers, and as soon as we bypass someone on our career path, as soon as they're no longer in a position where they can help us, we forget we even knew them.

Some of us aren't, and don't.

"At that time, I don't think it was fair that they fired him because we had a couple of guys hurt," Guillen said. "I wanted to show him I was loyal, and that I was there to help him. I worked with him with the Montreal Expos and with the Marlins, and I don't think I could have worked with someone else at that time.

"He said, 'Don't burn any bridges. The players need you. You should be there.'"