Ozzie... the collest fucking guy in baseball

I am gonna talk about the coolest guy in baseball… That’s right I am talking about Oswaldo José Guillén Barrios AKA Ozzie Guillén.

Sure I am jaded, The Chicago White Sox run in my blood. I am a Sox fan by lineage and geography. I was born in South Shore to father who grew up in South Shore; I had little choice in the matter of which team to root for. I always knew that my allegiance was with the right Chicago team but after 2005 I could officially tell all Cubs fans to SUCK IT!

But I digress… I am not sure of this fact but I believe that the first baseball game I attended was in 1985. I would have been three years old and I fell asleep at the game. This would have been Ozzie Guillén’s rookie season playing with the Sox.

That year he won the AL Rookie of the Year award. This was the beginning of my love for the man that my sister and I lovingly referred to as Fozzie Guillén.

As a young buck I was drawn to Ozzie because of his passion and apparent love for the game. This dude had so much fun out there as a player and continues this love as a manager. He is a jokester with a hot head. You never wonder what the guy is thinking because he will tell you. 1990 marked the last season that the Sox played at Comiskey Park and also the year that Ozzie won the Golden Glove Award. Each year Oak Park Little League would make a pilgrimage to Comiskey where we would get to parade around the field in our uniforms before the game. That year the Sox played the other Sox… I remember giving Wade Boggs a high five as I walked around the field… Sure he was on the Red Sox but I was 9 so fuck off. I also remember kids on my team taking dirt from the infield and stuffing it into their pockets as a memento from Old Comiskey. I wish I would have done the same because I can’t help but feel like I could slang that shit to some dumb ass on Ebay. As a player and a manager Ozzie is intense! Wikapedia states, “As a player, he was regarded for his passion, speed, hustle, intensity and defensive abilities and his ebullient love for the game…” I don’t know what ebullient means but I feel like this statement is spot on none the less. In 1997 Ozzie’s time as a player with the White Sox was through and I could have cared less. By then I was too concerned with skateboarding, growing my hair long enough to have an under shave and playing bass for awesome grunge bands to give a shit. When I started caring about baseball again three years later Ozzie had been traded and was finishing out his final season as a player for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Fast forward to 2004 when Guillén signed on as Manager for the Sox… I, along with countless other Chicagoan’s, rejoiced. By the end of the 2005 he had led the South Side to their first World Series Championship since 1917. Later that year he was voted the 2005 AL Manager of the Year by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and in 2006 coached the AL in the All-star Game. You are the fucking man Ozzie!

All of this def makes Ozzie a world caliber ball player and manager but honestly you can keep all that. The reason that I love the guy is that he speaks his mind no matter who he offends. There are countless stories. There was the whole feud with Magglio Ordóñez where Ozzie said, “He fucked with the wrong guy, and he knows that, too. He knows for a fact that he fucked with the wrong people.” I honestly don’t even remember what they were fighting about but that is some gangsta shit to say right there. There has been countless times where, as a manager, Ozzie has ordered his pitchers to intentionally hit a batter. This is just some old school baseball shit right here. You can’t let the other team push you around. Ozzie is a fucking G! Or how about a comment he made about Carlos Lee. Lee failed to slide hard enough on a play at second, Ozzie’s reaction? "We had a guy go into 2nd base as if his wife was turning a double play." Fucking hilarious! Lee was traded at the end of the season.

There are also instances where pitchers have fucked up and Ozzie leaves them in to teach them a lesson. It is his way of gaining control over players. If they don’t pitch the game the way he wants he will leave them in when they get into trouble and let their ERA go to shit. He is a man of principle. But my favorite Ozzie tirade would have to be the incident involving then Chicago Sun Times columnist Jay Mariotti. Mariotti wrote many articles criticizing Ozzie, in June of 2006 the feud came to a head with Ozzie publically calling Mariotti a fucking piece of shit and a fag. Now this event solidified Ozzie’s status in the Hip-Hop community because he took a page out of rappers Lil’ Wayne and Cammron’s books by claiming no homo.

In the end Guillén is the fucking man! He is the kind of guy I would never want to coach my kids little league team, but he is the right man for pro ball. After all if you can’t get irate and throw temper tantrums in the majors, where can you do it? Sure it’s only a game, but it is also their job. Pro players and managers have a right to get upset when things are not going well… IT’S THEIR FUCKING JOB! You would be upset too if the bike messenger company you work for was not holding their end of the bargain, or if your boss at the IT company was fucking up. Ozzie is the kind of guy I would love to get drunk with, and you know he likes to get drunk. He was one of the only managers who defended player’s rights to have beer in the clubhouse. Aside from the beer and blow up dolls that he is known to keep in the club house Ozzie is the coolest guy in baseball. I stand behind every decision he has ever made. And I totally agree with you Ozzie… Jay Mariotty is a fag (no homo).

- Noah Skillz