All The Wrong Battles

By: Chicago Sports Review

It’s not actually that easy to plunk someone.

Ozzie Guillen should remember that. You try to skip the knees, and you generally try to avoid a free one-week vacation by aiming below the neck. Then, as Freddy Garcia once told me when I asked him about the practice, that’s not even the biggest problem.

“They can move,” said Garcia.

So it’s really not that easy at all. Not as simple as, say, at least lately, getting into Ozzie Guillen’s head. And while it’s a head that is occupied by a brilliant, instinctive baseball mind, it’s one that can’t seem to realize that control does not mean surrender. Turning the other cheek is not waving a white flag. Someone drilling one of your guys does not always demand a response. Not at least one that could jeopardize the game. Little battles that nobody really wins don’t add up to a war victory.

Usually they just mean casualties.

So I was annoyed that I didn’t make it out to the stadium yesterday. Even though he had to leave before the game for health reasons, I would have loved to see the hypothetical “No comment” facial expression of Buck Showalter after the game when I would have asked: Is it worth it just to hit a White Sox player at some point in a game?

Seriously, is it? If you’re behind, don’t you just put a bruise on somebody’s hip?

If you were being dominated by Jon Garland, who has been a dominating pitcher with a 2.47 ERA over his last eight starts, wouldn’t you just tell your guy to miss inside with a brushback and see what the opposing manager might do?

I think you would.

I think you might hope that Garland would take spoken or unspoken orders, and fire one pitch at or behind one of your batters in the name of representing his teammates and avoiding a brutal confrontation with his manager. And by doing that, not only would you have a chance to put a batter on that might not have even sniffed first base, but you might be able to disrupt Garland’s rhythm, which is the unfavorable rhythm of a game you’ll probably lose.

And he threw two purpose pitches? “Wow,” you’ll think. In this game of equitable solutions, that gets a lot of guys ejected.

The Sox need a leader and a mentor in their corner, not a trainer that might take a suspension because he just couldn’t help getting into the ring himself.

 And wouldn’t it just be the icing on the cake if say, Garland got tossed? Or wouldn’t it be sweet when even if the ump shows impressive restraint and understands the politics at play, Ozzie Guillen blows up on the pitcher dominating your team, a guy who was still willing to take one for his side, but just missed? Twice.I think you would. And I certainly think Buck Showalter or whoever calls that shots that day would.

And even if the opposing manager had no part in the charade, it speaks to what this season has become that Guillen took the bait. I mean, this was a hook sans a worm. On a day when his starter was dominating, Guillen risked losing him, or watching him get tossed in a must-win game. (Umpires have certainly tossed guys for this stuff. They aren’t required to issue warnings.) And it doesn’t compute. Guillen is a phenomenally talented manger who keeps a great clubhouse. As Steve Stone told me last year, it’s one of the best in the game, and rivals Tony LaRussa’s and Bobby Cox’s in professionalism.

And Guillen idolizes Bobby Cox, who is a legend at handling pitchers. What happened yesterday was no way to handle a pitcher who was not only in the midst of dominating a good lineup in a must-win game, but still attempted to take one for his team. It was worse. It was a disgrace, and counter-intuitive.

Mitch Hedberg once complained, “The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall. I’ve played against them. They’re (bleeping) relentless!”

Last year, that was the lament of other managers.

You could see it in their eyes and hear it in their tone as you asked them what the deal was after their team had just been swept out of the Cell. The Sox were relentless. They won in odd ways that started with relentless pitching, followed by relentless creative play, and relentless clutch hitting, and their fiery manager really wasn’t so fiery. He was instinctive, and managing every player to his full potential, and he saved his punch lines for the reporters.

The Sox are not a worse group of talent this year because they’re in second place, but they are struggling somewhat as a team because of the histrionics. They struggle with weighty expectations, the kind champions must get used to. They struggle with all kinds of good problems.

And they need a leader and a mentor in their corner, not a trainer that might take a suspension because he just couldn’t help getting into the ring himself.

They have enough talent to win this division, or the Wild Card (who cares?) and they have a GM who I am certain will make a move to make them better if he can.

And while we’re on it, can you think of a better word to describe Ken Williams than “relentless?” It’s all about “this year” with him, regardless of how highly you think of the stockpiles of minor league talent these guys have. Alfonso Soriano may soon be in the fold.

And it should be about this year with Ozzie Guillen. It should be about keeping himself in the dugout, and his guys on the field.

When he decided to fire at Jay Mariotti, it cost him.

And columnists and reporters will do that to you. We have the option, and the motives sometimes to drag people down to our level. If a critic is a guy who will walk through the battlefield and shoot the wounded, then on a couple of occasions, Guillen has decided to walk out there too, and trade fire amid the stench.

And yet we have to ask: Mariotti got under Ozzie’s skin because Ozzie reacted. Otherwise, we never would have known. Outbursts are reality. Otherwise, Guillen is just taking the high road, and skips the sensitivity training farce, and his team doesn’t suffer the distraction.

At that point, he’s just a gifted manager overseeing a solid team one hot streak from the playoffs.

People will do all kinds of things to win. One is to draw a strong opponent into an unnecessary battle. Ozzie got into one with Mariotti.

Who says that an opposing manager with a hunch isn’t just doing the same thing?

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