At first I thought it might be a bird dropping landing right next to me
with a dull thud. However, looking around, I found no hint of any white
and black fused deification on the ground.
That was Tuesday, just one day after the White Sox and manager Ozzie
Guillen parted ways. Having thought about it for a bit now, I realize
that I must have experienced one last Ozzie F-bomb falling out of the
sky as he flew from Chicago to Miami to become the new skipper in South
Florida.
Around game time on Monday, it had already been rumored that Guillen was
not going to be brought back by the White Sox and, when looking back on
his pregame press conference with the media, it makes sense. After all,
Guillen was in somewhat rare form about his meeting that afternoon with
team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. In fact, I counted no less than four
F-bombs in that story. Included in that rant was the statement "(Bleep)
more years, I want more money. Life is about money. People are happy
when they make a lot of money."
In the end, you are likely reading this and thinking to yourself,
"typical Ozzie" — maybe even with a slight, sly grin on your face.
It's probably because he has grown quite famous for, not only speaking
his mind, but doing it by sprinkling it liberally with colorful
metaphors along the way.
I'm not particularly a fan of that style, but it's amazing what you will
overlook if a team is winning — particularly the team you grew up
rooting for. Particularly when said manager helped guide that team to a
World Series title — something I almost never thought I'd see in my
lifetime.
However, the White Sox have not won lately, for whatever reason, and
Guillen's tact has worn thin. Obviously, I'm not alone in this since I
have yet to meet a single Sox fan who thought this was a bad idea.
Guillen is 678-617 in his managerial career and I wish him luck in the future with the Marlins.
A couple of interesting things happened around this story, as well, in case you missed it.
The first thing is that the White Sox retained the rights to Guillen and
then traded him to the Marlins — reportedly for infielder Ozzie
Martinez and Jhan Marinez. Martinez is 23 and has a .258 batting average
over 34 games in the past two years in the Marlins minor league system.
Marinez is a 23-year old right-handed relief pitcher who is 10-15 in
six minor league seasons with a 4.12 ERA in 223 innings.
It's one of a handful of times in MLB history that a manager has been
traded. The last time it happened was in 2002 when the Seattle Mariners
traded Lou Piniella to the Tampa Devil Rays for outfielder Randy Winn.
The other interesting thing was the way the White Sox reportedly sent
bench coach Joey Cora packing. One source said Cora was told on Monday
that he'd be the interim manager for the last two games of the season.
Then on Tuesday, it has been said that GM Kenny Williams texted Cora,
telling him not to bother coming back to the ballpark after all.
To be honest, I was a bit relieved at that since my opinion is that Cora
would not be an upgrade over Guillen. Pitching coach Don Cooper managed
the last two games. He, along with first base coach Harold Baines, will
be brought back next season to work with the new manager.
It will be interesting to see which way the organization will go with
the search. Right now, a fresh face is probably exactly what the team
needs. Preferably someone who knows how to sensor his own speech —
either that or he'd better know how to mix in his F-bombs with wins.
No comments:
Post a Comment