SportsDystopia

With his White Sox set to face Minnesota in what will be the AL Central’s deciding series, Sox manager Ozzie Guillen publicly called out Javier Vazquez, his Tuesday starter.

When asked by the Chicago Sun-Times about Vazquez’s credentials as a big game starter, Guillen replied “He hasn’t been.  That’s the bottom line.”  He went on to say “What you see is what you get.  Javy is going to be Javy.  I just want him to be aggressive, throw the ball over the plate and knock somebody on their ass.  That’s a big three games for us.”

While some in the media have questioned whether or not it was the right move, it fits cleanly into what he has always done as Sox manager, namely deflecting media attention away from his players onto himself, and then publicly calling out one of the guys in the clubhouse when Guillen feels it necessary.

Guillen’s detractors have grown more vocal throughout his tenure as White Sox manager, the most common complaint (for obvious reasons) that he needs to be muzzled by the organization.  But those detractors miss the point when they refer to him as a “loose cannon”.  Most famously, he was dubbed “The Blizzard of Oz” by former Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, with whom Guillen had a well-known public feud through the years.  Guess which one of them still has a job.

Guillen is on the very short list for best manager in baseball, and a big reason for his success, in addition to his in game strategic abilities, is that he has always been able to deflect the media’s eye onto him, instead of onto his players.  It’s how he’s able to keep the pressure off the clubhouse, as in ‘05 when the Sox nearly blew their substantial division lead before going on to win the World Series with an 11-1 roll through the playoffs that ranks as one of the most dominant runs in baseball history, and it’s how he’s able to keep the Sox afloat now with the worst “on paper” team of any playoff contender, even after losing his best hitter, Carlos Quentin, for September with a broken wrist.  Like no other manager in the game, he turns his teams into more than the sum of their parts.

Also like no other manager in the game, he’s endlessly quotable and usually right.  The list of Guillen’s public feuds and dust ups is so long that just it’s greatest hits would fill a column by it’s self, so I’ll cite just one example.

“Tell that Triple-A f*ck to shut the f*ck up and start throwing strikes or he’s going to get Dusty Baker fired”, he said in May of ‘06 after Cubs pitcher Rich Hill called Sox catcher AJ Pierzynski “gutless” and “pathetic” for running over Cubs catcher Michael Barrett at the plate, which of course led to Barrett throwing a sucker punch at AJ and igniting a bench-clearing brawl.  What happened the next day?  The Cubs demoted Rich Hill to AAA.

Go ahead and keep ripping Ozzie for his public persona, if you like.  He’s more than happy to take the abuse, and never shies away from a war of words with anyone, be they players, coaches, radio, TV, or print personalities.  But be warned: by doing so, you’re playing right into his hand, and allowing him to play the game, both on and off the field, on his terms.  And as long as that’s the case, the White Sox are going to keep winning, because Ozzie Guillen understands baseball and what it takes to put a winning team on the field better than anyone in the game.

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