Kenny “Stay Out of White Sox Business” Williams vs. Ozzie “The Vicious Venezuelan” Guillen – EliteXC’s next ratings-grabber?

By: Kolsky

Sorry Ozzie, but the Wizard of Oz is already taken and your “I never cared to learn English particularly well” accent makes it hard to forget where you come from. That said, I’m on your side in this thing – outside of my possibly insensitive headline.

Let’s backtrack a little, so we can start at the beginning. I think that’s usually the best place to begin. Specifically, let’s rewind to when Ozzie said this:

Just be ready, because I expect movement Tuesday. I expect Kenny Williams to do something Tuesday. And if we don’t do anything Tuesday, there are going to be a lot of lineup changes. That’s all I’m going to say about the offense.

It can be me. It can be [hitting coach] Greg Walker. It can be the players. It could be anybody. I’m sick and tired to watch this thing for a year and a half. I’m not protecting anybody anymore. Fuck it. If they can’t get it done, Kenny should find someone to get it done. That’s it… If we think we are going to win with the offense we have, we are full of shit. I’m just being honest.

Now, call me crazy, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Outside of the f-bomb that Ozzie dropped (an f-bomb that you will often see represented as a [bleep] on high-falootin’ sports websites, but you get the full effect of here on CSR… fuck it, you know?) what exactly is so wrong with his statements? Sounds like a frustrated manager blowing off some steam after a loss where his team left about 342 men on base.

phpxx8konpm.jpgShould we take it more slowly? I see a manager who’s fed up with a bunch of underperforming power hitters – a manager who pledged to play a different kind of baseball when he came here, and who played that kind of ball all the way to a World Series Championship in 2005. And now his team is back to that same, pre-2005 style – wait around for a three-run homer.

They can’t make anything happen with small ball, so if the big boppers don’t hit, these White Sox won’t get it done. And how are those big boppers doing, again? Oh, yeah… Jim Thome and Paul Konerko are hitting .212 and .205, respectively, and have combined for 16 homers and 52 RBI; which is only 13 RBI short of Josh Hamilton’s power stats.

By the way, Hamilton is just one dude (I know that could be confusing if you don’t follow the AL very closely). And if you’re not convinced that Thome and Konerko combined equal one good power hitter, note that rookie phenom Carlos Quentin is only two homers and four RBI away from out-performing the Thome/Konerko combination.

So Ozzie tells us, albeit in an angry tone, that if nobody new is gonna be brought into town, he’s going to shake things up. To wit – fuck it.

And what’s wrong with this, exactly? Is pointing out that many of the Sox current hitters have now sucked when it matters for a year-and-a-half a big no-no? When a team can’t hit, should a manager pretend everything is hunky dory? I think not.

Which brings us to Kenny Williams’ response. Specifically, by email to the Chicago Tribune, this:

It’s just not a good idea to throw your boss under the bus, especially when that boss has had your back as much as I have had his. I expect this team, if the leadership remains positive and the players stick together and continue to play hard, it will be a fun summer.

Maybe I’m missing something. Is suggesting that a general manager should do something to fix a broken team the equivalent of “tossing him under the bus”? And moreover, Kenny Williams hired Guillen, knows the volatile manager well and has – as he felt the need to mention – “had his back” consistently over the last few years. Is this sort of comment out of character, or in any way surprising?

Ozzie didn’t say, “Kenny fucked this thing up, and he needs to fix it.” That would be throwing his GM under the bus.

The fact is, Kenny put together a team that he thought would have a fast, base-stealing leadoff man in Jerry Owens; a tough, grind-it-out two hitter in Nick Swisher; a still-powerful middle of the order with Jermaine Dye, Thome and Konerko; and then a ton of upside in the bottom half with Orlando Cabrera, Joe Crede, AJ Pierzynski and whatever mess ended up at second base.

As it turns out, Owens never panned out, Swisher is the biggest disappointment ever (with Cabrera a close second) and the only power hitters getting anything done are Dye and Quentin. It’s not that Kenny should have seen this coming, necessarily – most people were more concerned about the team’s pitching going into the season, and it’s been the supposed “back end of the rotation” (Danks, Floyd and Contreras) keeping the Sox afloat all year.

But now – now that this group of hitters is failing, rather miserably – isn’t it fair to suggest that the GM do something? I think it is – and I think it’s unfair, and unwise, for said GM to take such clearly off-the-cuff comments so personally. Maybe there’s nothing he can do right now, and that’s fine; then go speak to Ozzie privately, and tell him to go ahead and make some lineup changes, because roster changes are just not realistic.

But to snap back, to make this into a two-way controversy, was stupid. It’s the same stupidity that led Williams to tell Frank Thomas to “stay out of White Sox business.” And it’s probably the same stupidity that makes him a good, smart, tough GM and that makes him so partial to Ozzie as a coach.

They’re a couple of loose cannons, and these spats will happen. Nobody is right, nobody is particularly wrong. Outside of everyone overreacting to it, I’m not sure there’s a whole hell of a lot of news here.

As this article is being posted on the web, Ozzie and Kenny are sitting down to discuss this. Here’s basically how I see this meeting going:

Kenny: So, what’s the problem Ozzie? Why are you throwing my name around the news.

Ozzie: Sorry Kenny, I’m just pissed about how nobody on this fucking team can hit, and it’s really fucking getting to me. I’m just not sure how I can keep this shit-train on the winning tracks without at least one guy that gets on base and makes things happen.

Kenny: I know, I know, things are rough. But right now, there’s just nothing I can do about bringing anyone new to town, and we really don’t have much help in the minor leagues, so I’m gonna need you to just do what you can for now with what we have. I know there’s a problem, and I’m gonna try to fix it. But for now, just try to hold on to first place.

Ozzie: Ok. But if they keep leaving runners on base, I’m probably going to lose my temper again.

Kenny: That’s totally cool with me, just so long as you don’t mention my name when you’re yelling and swearing.

Ozzie: Ok, cool. Hug it out?

Kenny: Sure.

They hug.

It’s kinda like in high school, when you and your best buddy got upset at each other, and screamed “fuck you” back and forth a few times; and then you rolled around on the ground a little until somebody twisted an arm or cut themselves, and then you looked at each other and were like, “alright, we’re cool.”

And it’s cool. Seriously cool – not like when girls say they’re cool and then talk about each other behind their backs for the next month, but just cool. Maybe you’re not as close as you once were, maybe you’re even a little closer.

It doesn’t much matter. The season keeps moving.

There is the possibility, of course, that Guillen is crazy like a fox – that all this is just his way of flipping the script on the media. Because an interesting thing has happened here…

The White Sox sit in first place, a half-game ahead of the Minnesota Twins in what has become essentially the worst division in baseball. Sure, the AL Central was supposed to be murderer’s row this year; but Cleveland can’t hit, Detroit can’t pitch and Minnesota has no players to speak of, so the Sox have gotten ahead by just playing decent baseball and getting some fantastic innings from their 3, 4 and 5 starters and their made over bullpen.

There are a lot of obvious problems with this team, a lot of questions that should be receiving media coverage:

Why are Thome and Konerko stinking it up for the second straight year? What’s the deal with Nick Swisher, the best-marketed flop in MLB history? Why did we trade a young, workhorse pitcher for an over-the-hill, son-of-a-bitch shortstop that can’t hit and calls the official scorer to complain about errors? How come our GM put together a team that has to sit around and wait for homers when he says he hates teams that have to sit around and wait for homers – isn’t that why we sucked in 2004?

Instead, what you’re reading in the Chicago papers is something more like this: “What’s Ozzie’s problem? He’s got a first place club, and he’s being this hard on them? Why’s he throwing his GM under the bus?”

In a good division the Sox would be in the middle of the pack, and there are more than a handful of local writers who would be happy to skewer everyone involved. Instead, again, Ozzie is the subject of virtually every bit of skewering. If he doesn’t mind it, I don’t see the problem, and I’m sure the players aren’t bothered by dozens of sports media outlets jumping to their defense.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that everything Ozzie does is planned out to the Nth degree as a ploy to distract the media – that would be ridiculous. But don’t think he doesn’t know how everyone will respond when he swears a little and criticizes everyone from his veteran sluggers to his longtime hitting coach to team management.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just a manager on the edge, flying off the handle because he’s sick and tired of watching his hitters take strike three with a runner in scoring position in extra innings. And I wouldn’t have a problem with that either.

Maybe Ozzie isn’t some sort of crazy genius. Maybe he’s just the Vicious Venezuelan. But he’s got a first-place team and a GM who’s now paying attention, so let’s not put him on the firing line just yet.

A quick aside, on Jay Mariotti

I’d just like to point out the irony and hypocrisy inherent in Mr. Mariotti’s column today.

First of all – I think Jay is the best sportswriter in Chicago, by a longshot, and arguably the best sportswriter going right now. He’s a true wordsmith – he hails back to a time when sportswriters were writers too, a time that’s easy to forget when you’re stuck reading the Mike Downey’s of the world (and if you don’t know who Mike Downey is, consider yourself lucky and don’t waste your time looking for his barely legible pap.)

In Tuesday’s column, though, Mariotti once again screams for the firing of Ozzie Guillen – something he’s done repeatedly and ridiculously for years, since long before Guillen inappropriately called him a fag. And he’s using the word “we” with his accusations: “We are sick and tired of [Guillen];” WE drive right past US Cellular field, not because of hatred for the Sox but “because Guillen works there.”

Why? Because Guillen makes people angry; because Guillen speaks the truth, tells people what he thinks, even when it’s unpopular or a little inappropriate; because he doesn’t want to see Ozzie “get away with insubordination” towards his suddenly admirable GM Kenny Williams and ownership led by Jerry Reinsdorf.

It’s bullshit. It’s utter bullshit, and WE ARE NOT WITH YOU, JAY. Don’t lump us in with your hatred, because it’s personal.

Isn’t this the same Kenny Williams that you’ve hound-dogged about every move and criticized at every step? The same Reinsdorf who you’ve called the worst owner in sports in the past? And as for insubordination… you’ve had your fair share of flare-ups, Mariotti – yet the Sun Times keeps you around, don’t they? Could it be because you’re good at your job?

Mariotti, for all that he does right, is hated by fans who read his columns because he’s a jerk, and he often writes about truths that they don’t want to hear. Does it make him a bad columnist? Absolutely not. In fact, one could argue it makes him an even better columnist.

Likewise, people hate Ozzie because he sometimes goes a little crazy and speaks too much truth. Does that make him a bad manager? His record and his World Series ring say a definitive “no.” He told us he’d be back to his “old self” this year, and presumably this is exactly the kind of thing he meant.

So can you make an argument to fire Guillen? Sure. But maybe Mariotti should take a step back and think about exactly what was so wrong with what Guillen did. And think about whether he, in a similar situation, might have done a very similar thing.

And let’s just hold off on calling the pot black, Mr, Kettle.

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Matt Kolsky (please feel free to call him Kolsky) is the contributing editor of the Chicago Sports Review and the editor-in-chief of Serious Sports News Network. You can hear Kolsky live on Chicago's kookiest and most fun sports radio show, The Morning Break, on Fridays (from 10-Noon on WSBC 1240 AM). As you can see, he's very busy, but you can also send him email via serioussportsnewsnetwork@gmail.com, and it's entirely possible that he'll respond.

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