Tag: Ozzie Guillen

Ozzie’s caught tweeting in the dugout

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White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen is in doghouse again though I’m not sure for the right reasons.  He’s been suspended for two games following his altercation with umpire Todd Tichenor at Yankee Stadium Wednesday night.  MLB states that Guillen is in violation of its “social media policy and other regulations regarding the use of electronic equipment during the course of a game.”

Indeed, after arguing balls and strikes with Tichenor, Guillen went back to the dugout and showed him up the best way he knew how.  By using Twitter. Kicking dust at the ump is so old school.

Two tweets came through Guillen’s account
 the first simply said, “This one going to cost me a lot money this is patetic”  The next a little more to the point, said, “Today a tough guy show up a yankee stadium”.

As of now, his twitter account has been silent since then.

I’m usually pretty tolerant of Guillen’s antics.  He makes the game more colorful and gives the organization a respectable amount of uncomfortableness that I like.  But MLB has it right.  Guillen has a job to do in the dugout and it’s not to be using his smartphone to twitter about the game whether to badmouth the umps or whatever.

By the way, Cubs manager Mike Quade has made it clear that HE won’t be caught using Twitter mostly because he can’t pronounce it:

“I will never get in trouble tweeting, twittering, tweetering — I can’t even say it — because I will never do it.  I don’t have the time, energy or know-how, and I’m real happy about that.”

Give him time, he might come around.

And Ozzie, arguing balls and strikes, really??

Ozzie Guillen gone all Tweetin’ on us

Ozzie Guillen is tweeting. 

At least that’s the rumor.  You never know with celeb-types if these things are real but it’s been picked up by the mainstream media so it HAS to be legit, RIGHT?  <——  <sarcasm>

But seriously, this one appears to be the real thing.  As to the content of Guillen’s tweets, nothing too majorly earth-shattering.  Things like:

Yessss nice day let’s go to work

and

I feel nice and relax today I don’t know why yeeessssssss carlos quentin and rios in camp b ready people

Guillen on twitter is appropriately, all the buzz on twitter right now.  If you think of it, Twitter is just the thing for the outspoken Guillen.  How MLB will moderate him will be the big internal issue, I’m sure. 

Apparently, Kenny Williams is already unhappy with Guillen’s idea of tweetin’. 

If you twitter, you can find Guillen tweeting @ozzieguillen. 

ALCS Beat: Yankees comeback not enough against resurging Angels

As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over”.  And as my buddy Don, who is an Angel fan said late night, “If Brian Fuentes had walked Swisher, I think I would have jumped off my roof”. 

Fortunately for the Angels (and Don S), he didn’t.

I learned my lesson though.  I watched the game on TV at home till the beginning of the 7th.  John Lackey had been pitching brilliantly up until then and had a 4-0 lead.  Thinking that Big John had things well in hand, I decided to head to local coffee shop and watch the rest of the game on Gameday while I got some work done.

It’s a 6 block walk to the coffee shop and I was away from the game for 15 minutes, 20 tops.  Logging into Gameday, I was rudely greeted with a 7-6 Yankee lead.  Refreshing the browser didn’t seem to help. 

Looking back at it, I had a sneaking suspicion that Lackey was tiring.  Mid-inning, the camera crew show him in the dugout and boy, he really looked spent.  I remember commenting on that to my kid.

But thanks to a 3-run seventh fueled by back-to-back base hits by Guerrero and Morales, the Angels got back on top for the final score 7-6.

I’d like to say that was the end of the excitement but the Yankees made the Halos earn their pay Thursday night.  Angel reliever Brian Fuentes made things a little too interesting.  After a two-out, bases empty intentional pass to Alex Rodriguez, Fuentes followed that up with a Matsui walk and a Cano HBP to load the bases.  If that weren’t enough, Nick Swisher took him to a full count before popping out to short for third out to end the game. 

Fuentes line looked good.  One inning, no hits and a save.  But that sure didn’t tell the story of the game.  However, he got the job done.

The Angels got their miracle.  Three-Two sounds a whole lot better than Two-Zero or Three-One.

 

Other Postseason News:

 

2009 Rookies of the Year: Gordon Beckham & J.A. Happ

Dodgers Sox Spring BaseballThe Sporting News has announced the winners of the 2009 Rookie of the Year Gordon Beckham of the White Sox and J.A. Happ of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Beckham was called to Chicago on June 4th, playing thirdbase everyday, he ended up batting .270 with 28 doubles, 14 home runs, and 63 RBIs, in 103 games.  The most remarkable thing was that Gordon  was a SS at the University of Georgia last year when he hit more homers than anyone in NCAA Division I.  So he was learning a new position in the big leagues, and learn it he did, I predict several Gold Gloves in his future.  Other White Sox Rookies of the Year are 1951 Minnie Minoso, 1956 Luis Aparicio, 1963 Pete Ward & Gary Peters, 1966 Tommie Agee, 1969 Carlos May, 1983 Ron Kittle, and 1985 Ozzie Guillen.

Happ was 12-4 with a 2.93 ERA for Philadelphia, appearing out of the bullpen until late May when the young lefthander moved into the rotation.  I remember seeing his changeup in spring training in Clearwater, FL, and thinking how much he reminded me of Phillies ace Cole Hamels.  He pitched two shutouts, while striking out 119 batters in 166 innings.  Other Phillies Rookies of the Year are 1946 Del Ennis, 1948 Richie Ashburn, 1957 Jack Sanford, 1964 Dick Allen, 1980 Lonnie Smith, 1984 Juan Samuel, 1997 Scott Rolen, and 2005 Ryan Howard.

MLB Playoff Picture Features No White Sox

no soxThis man is just like the playoffs, no White Sox!  GM Kenny Williams wasn’t shy about going out there and spending his bosses money.  Picking up ace starter Jake Peavy, has yet to pitch for the Pale Hose, in exchange for lefthanded pitchers Clayton Richard & Aaron Poreda and righties Dexter Carter & Adam Russell.  Then Williams spent more money on a waiver claim from the Toronto Blue Jays, outfielder Alex Rios.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the playoffs, we started losing, and it snowballed out of control.  After the first portion of a tough roadtrip, in which the Sox lost six of seven to Boston & New York, I’m declaring the season OVER!  Especially seeing Chicago now takes its sorry act on the road to their own personal place of horrors, the Metrodome.  I know the experts are saying, we need to sweep in order to have a chance, I know better.

We have not played well for a variety of reasons, surely there have been some good times, the highlight being Mark Buehrle’s Perfecto.  But things have gone South in a hurry, and not in a Southside kind of a good way.  All season long we never had a 4th or 5th starter we could depend on, tough to win conceding 40% of your games.  Alexei Ramirez has not looked good at SS, he was very good at secondbase, why did we move him?  Carlos Quentin is still not healthy, somehow he’ll always manage to be hurt, face the facts.  A.J. Pierzynski couldn’t throw me out attempting to steal, he doesn’t have an arm, and has driven in only 37 runs, while hitting .313, that’s tough to do, maybe not with the slowsters batting ahead of him.  We talked about improving team speed, but didn’t.  Why can’t our pitchers hold on baserunners and why can’t our hitters bunt?  We’d really be introuble, like we’re not now, if we didn’t hit home runs.  Mark Buehrle, Paul Konerko, & Jermaine Dye have all stopped contributing, what’s it going to be like when Jermaine isn’t playing for us next year?  No different from this year, he stopped playing some time ago.  Batting Jim Thome, who walks, ahead of Paul Konerko, who hits into doubleplays, not a good idea.  Our fundamentals are terrible, whose fault is that, Jay Mariotti’s?  The bullpen has gone up in flames like a California wildfire.  Brent Lillibridge is a minor leaguer.  We went into the season without a leadoff hitter, luckily we plucked Scott Podsednik off the garbage pile, where would we be without him?  Also Gordon Beckham has done well at thirdbase, despite the fact he never played it in the minors or in the Arizona Fall League, at least not on a regular basis, and why not?  Did we really believe as Hawk kept spouting, that Josh Fields reminded him of Harmon Killebrew, maybe when he swung & missed.  We could blame it on Rios for not providing the spark we really needed when we got him or we could simply look into the mirror and see we just aren’t that good.

‘Bored’ Ozzie makes baseball a little more interesting

As a Cub fan, one would expect that I would have a dislike for Ozzie Guillen.  Not necessarily so.  Oh sometimes I can’t stand him.  Other times, he does things that make me stand up and applaud.

Then there are these times when he talks to the press and I just smile:

"I’m always bored," Guillen said. "I’m not playing. You’re sitting around for seven innings. My game starts in the sixth [or] seventh inning. That’s when you see me look around the stands a lot, because you play this game for that many years and coach it and be there for that many years and you’re just managing, it’s a boring game all day for me."

I may not like exactly what Ozzie said but I appreciate the fact that he speaks his mind.  Twenty-nine other managers talk to the press and toe the company line and use pre-approved clichĂ©s.  When the media puts a mike in front of Ozzie, he makes baseball a little more interesting for us.

Oh no doubt you’ll here those in the media respond to this.  They’ll recoil in horror and say, “How could he say such a thing?”. 

Let’s face it
 to some degree, he’s saying what a lot of the other managers are probably thinking. 

Wrigley fuss

Lots of hatin’ on Wrigley Field (and its fans) going on lately


Why Your Stadium Sucks: Wrigley Field

Wrigley Field Bleacher fans are a bunch of slobs

[Oh, and I can’t leave this one out]

Wrigley Field makes Ozzie Guillen puke

Ozzie does have a flair for the dramatic.

This weekend, I’m going to see the Cubs first hand for the first time this year so I guess I’ll judge for myself. 

Guillen happy to be Swisher-less?

Apparently, Ozzie Guillen didn’t see eye-to-eye with Nick Swisher during the Swish’s stay in Chicago.  According the Chicago Tribune, they didn’t gel.

 

Was Swisher a bad influence in the clubhouse late in the year?

You’ve got to ask the players about that. To be honest with you, I was not happy with the way he was reacting at the end of the season. He wasn’t helping me either.

 

Guillen just got the Chicago Easter Seals Award for his work in helping autism research so I’m going to refrain from saying anything snarky about him (at least in this post).  The White Sox donated $1 million to the cause.  Good on them.

OZZIE – OH NO! NOT VAZQUEZ!

Before the first postseason game between the Rays and the White Sox down in the Sunshine State, I was feeling pretty good. Tampa Bay had lost 90 or more games for ten straight years, although this year the Devil Rays minus the Devil were able to put their losing ways behind them, and somehow win the AL East. I’m a math guy, so somehow 9=8 doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever works.

I’ve been lucky enough to be on hand at the Cell to witness first hand, what’s been working, and what hasn’t. I came in from Waupaca to watch Javier Vazquez spit it out, yet again, on Saturday vs the Indians. Which forced the Pale Hose into a jam whereby they needed to win three straight games against three different opponents to salvage a playoff berth. When the wheels came off and Vazquez was removed from the game, I screamed BOO louder than I’ve ever done so before. Let me explain something here. I am not a fan, who cheers a player on the top, and then boos them when they fall apart. Javier Vazquez has great stuff, probably the best stuff on the staff. But he refuses to trust his stuff and will not pitch inside. Often times he tries to be cute, enticing batters to swing at pitches just outside, falling behind in the count, and then getting clobbered. It’s maddening.

Anyway after winning the three games needed to get into postseason, it was time for the playoff series to begin. The Rays have a solid rotation, so I wasn’t sure whom they’d throw in game one, but I was positive the White Sox would start Mark Buehrle. Even though Vazquez has the best stuff, Buehrle is our #1, no doubt about it. I realized my Buehrle tee shirt was down in the dirty wash, pulled it out, but was shocked to find out, reading the paper, that Javier Vazquez was starting game one for Chicago.

This is the same Vazquez that Ozzie Guillen called out, saying, he was a choker & not a big game starter. That strategy didn’t work before Saturday’s game, so now he was showing him the ultimate confidence by starting him in the playoff opener. Wasn’t Ozzie paying attention, hadn’t he been watching this guy pitch? Surely Buehrle would’ve been pitching on three days rest, but he’d been doing it down the stretch, with positive results. With off days there was the possibility we wouldn’t have to see Javier start at all in the playoffs, but here he was, out there getting ready to get pounded by the lefthanded heavy lineup of the Rays. I was resigned to the fact, we’d be down 1-0 to a team that had never been to the postseason, giving them momentum.

Of course Vazquez did get pounded and the White Sox are now in a hole in a must win game #2 with Buehrle on the bump. A rookie lefthanded reliever Clayton Richard was brought on to relieve Javy, totally dominating the Rays batters, and I had to think, what might have been. The good thing is that Javier won’t be starting any more games in this series, hopefully not any more in a White Sox uniform (I purposely pictured him in a Yankee uniform, because I can’t stand seeing him in ours), but it might be too late. Hopefully the White Sox can climb out of this hole, with their backs against the wall, and defeat Tampa Bay.