It seems to be blowing over now, but that little media firestorm over Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen's latest rant was pretty silly, wasn't it? Of course Jay Mariotti jumped in to say it's time for Ozzie to go, but he says that all the time.
That wasn't all, though. There were serious, furrowed-brow conversations about whether Ozzie had gone too far this time all over the sports TV networks and the Internet. All because Guillen said a bunch of bad words and that general manager Kenny Williams was going to have to make some changes like right now after a third straight loss to the Tampa Bay Rays Sunday.
"I expect Kenny to do something Tuesday, and if we don't do anything Tuesday, there are going to be a lot of lineup changes," he said, as transcribed by the Chicago Sun-Times. "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. [Bleep] it!" And so on and so forth and "If we think we are going to win with the offense we have, we are full of [bleep]."
They're also in first bleeping place.
Williams called Guillen's rant "very disappointing" and added, "We have the horses."
The chattering classes took Guillen's rant -- which really wasn't much of a rant but more of a guy sitting there calmly calling his team's offense horsebleep -- as throwing Williams, in the annoyingly popular phrase among the chattering classes, under the bus.
It just sounded to me like a hotheaded manager blowing off some steam at the end of a bad weekend in an ugly building, trying to light a fire under his team. Guillen does this with some regularity, whether the White Sox are having a good year or a bad one. He did it in 2005 and they won the World Series. It's just what he does.
Guillen, Williams and owner Jerry Reinsdorf reportedly met before Tuesday's game -- which did not follow any roster moves by Williams or feature the promised wholesale lineup changes by Guillen, a good indication that he was just making noise. Guillen said he regretted his rant, didn't mean to call out Williams, his pal, and he believes in his team.
That's why it's blowing over. Guillen fell on his sword a little, smoothed it over with the boss, but come on, people. I'm no fan of Guillen's homophobic moments, but have we really reached the point where a bleeping baseball manager can't call his team horsebleep without putting his bleeping job in danger?
That's bullbleep. Bleep it!
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