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

A Half-Hearted Crtique of the Attractiveness Ratings

Jenni has done us all a huge service by systematically ranking the attractiveness of each player in the American League, and then ranking each team on their overall looks. This is an important part of baseball that the Bill James types have ignored for too long. But I was a little skeptical when I saw that, after 'three weeks of studious evaluations' Jenni had ranked her beloved Yankees first while my Boston Red Sox were ranked last. How convenient. But how could a team that chose this guy (I'm not going to comment on what his wife is wearing in case Jorge reads this blog) as its captain be ranked so far ahead of a team with this angel patrolling center field? So, in typical Masshole fashion, I called Jenni out on her 'bogus' ranking system. She then raised the ante by inviting me to take my disagreements public with a guest post on her blog. So here we are.

Because I am a researcher by trade and because I didn't want to add to the tedious Yankees suck-Red Sox suck back and forth, I decided to try to do a more scientific assessment of the issue. Baseball is all about statistics and facial attractiveness can be measured as a statistic based on symmetry and proportion. So, I thought I'd find a program where you can upload pictures, run them through a model that rates their attractiveness, and settle this dispute once and for all. Easier said then done. After much Googling, this site was the closest thing I could find. Undeterred by the fact that everything was written in Korean, I downloaded the software and uploaded a picture of Josh Beckett. I thought the software would spit out some kind of attractiveness score, then I'd upload another picture, etc. Instead I had to connect 30 dots to specific points on Josh Beckett's face, with such instructions as 'Connect to highest point of lateral eyebrow, left'. I did this for all 30 points and still nothing. It never let me move on to the results. So then I got frustrated, swore at the computer, and gave up.

The next day I decided to try one more time. After some more googling, I found Digital Physiognomy another facial reading program. I downloaded the free software and updated a picture of Jason Varitek. This site was easier to use than the Korean site, but less scientific and more new age and weird. So, for Jason Varitek I didn't get a score for his attractiveness I did get their 'interpretation' of his face. Apparently V-Tek's life is pretty grim. Here's the reading:

Steep Introvert. Flacidity/depression. An unbalance and instability of nervous system. Impracticality to family life and women.

After uploading a picture of Josh Beckett and getting the same reading, I decided that either this site was bunk or I was using it wrong, probably both. So this is a long way to go with no punchline. Jenni's rankings have to stand for now until someone, preferably someone that can read Korean, has the time and patience to do a more rigorous analysis. So Yankees fans, when you are watching A-Rod hit a weak pop-up in yet another clutch situation, or CC burst the seams in another pair of pants, take comfort in the fact that you've got the prettiest team in the American League.

Straw!

I feel compelled to share an important, if personal, baseball experience that is wholly unrelated to the so-far dominant theme of this blog, baseball player attractiveness. While we use this forum to rank players based on hair, off-field hobbies (horror movies, spaghetti, being a douche), and, occasionally, skill, I would like to instead consider a time when such rational criteria for analyzing rosters were unknown to me.

In the earliest years of my baseball revelry, I somehow, resorting only to baseball cards and TV recaps, selected a suitable favorite, the NY Mets' promising young slugger, Darryl Strawberry. Returning home to Long Island one summer (1990?) from a trip to visit family in central Pennsylvania, my famished family stopped for dinner at a TGI Fridays in Queens. There was excitement around restaurant, which turned out to be in response to the presence of Mr. Strawberry, dining there post-game. I happened to have a number of baseball cards in our car, as I no doubt entertained myself on long trips by alphabatizing, collating, and gazing at them. My father helped me retrieve a 1989 Topps All-Star Darryl Strawberry card, along with an old ball point pen, from the car and escorted me to a table where the star sat eating his steak (I think) with a friend. I was unable to speak, and stood awkwardly with my poofy hair and large teeth as Darryl autographed the card. The inadequate pen was only able to scratch "Darryl" in the front. He grunted in disappointment, which seemed to accentuate the fact that we were inconveniencing him, though on the whole he did not come off as impolite. The brown cardboard backing provided a more ideal surface, where he had a more successful experience with the pen. I also recall Strawberry having a small band-aid on his cheekbone. When we got home the evening news showed a highlight of Strawberry making an important catch and sporting the same band-aid, as if confirming the authenticity of my new autographed memorbilia.

Bog wading

As promised (and I know everyone is waiting with baited breath), here's WADE BOGGS. He was playing on the Red Sox when I was v little and went to my first Red Sox game. My parents have an uncut sheet of baseball cards from '88 with Boggs prominently featured in all his mustached glory.

His only world series win came when he was on the Yankees, though, which I didn't know until my friend Jim said, "Yeah, don't you remember that picture of him riding a police horse?"
Just like the cowboy that mustache implies that he is.
(I don't know how to move photos around so you'll have to bear with what may turn out as nonsensical placement.)


Did Wade have hair replacement?
Here's Wade doing some sort of commentary in 2008:















Here's an image that certainly predates that shot, though I must say that it's quite a good photo of Wade in general.




How many points for most boring blog entry ever?




So much for blogging in Sam's stead.

P.R.!!

In an attempt to draw attention away from ARod's newfound ugliness, I'm presenting Pete Rose as my first handsome nominee from the archives.

This is Pete Rose exhibiting the superhuman feat of diving/sliding/flying toward a base.

He's also the only baseball player I know of to hold ranks with the likes of Jackie O and Diane Von Furstenberg with his Andy Warhol portrait.

I'm trying to think of a clever title for my next post but I think Wade Boggs sums it up. DIBS

Fat Kid

It's true, Sam. Prince Fielder was going to be my pick, too. I mean, when literally a fat kid, he was in a McDonald's commercial. He's a favorite to be the brunt of photoshopped fatkidfood jokes.

But my second pick will have to be Lenny Dykstra, who rocks that 80's frat i wanna punch you in the face look, because we all know that it wasn't tobacco in his mouth, but stored food, and it wasn't steroids that made him huge, it was his secret love for eating.

Joes

Thanks to Kei for putting me up on this blog and to Jenni for extending the invitation to contribute. Regrettably I don't believe I have the background in baseball fandom as anyone else who's posted so far, as I mostly stopped paying attention between the strike year of 1994 and last year when my fantasy football leaguemates convinced me to join their basketball and baseball leagues as well. As it is, most of my knowledge of current players stems from the little pictures that appear on their profile pages of Yahoo! Sports. I've found these pictures to be as important an indicator of fantasy value as actual statistics, and they've helped sway decisions on whether or not to pick someone up/target them in trade.

Sometime around six weeks into the basketball season, I was surprised to find that Yahoo! updated the profile photos for everyone. Assuming this will occur as well in baseball and being a Joe myself, I've decided to preserve the images of Joes that I found interesting. In the absence of large easy-to-see photographs, I've attempted to present these in a yearbook-style layout:

Again, my analysis of these players is limited to a year of looking at box scores and their profile images.
José Valverde - I like his rosy cheeks and teddy-bear like demeanor
Joe Blanton - similar young-fat-kid appeal as Bobby Jenks? I needed five images to match the page width
Joel Zumaya - pleasing (but not extraordinary) beard, fastball reaches up to 104MPH, and injured playing Guitar Hero
Adam Jones - wouldn't be a yearbook image without this
Joe Smith - chin and adam's apple appear almost perfectly symmetrical

If I had to choose a favorite player based an appearance, I'd have to go with Max Scherzer of the Arizona Diamondbacks. He doesn't yet have a profile image on Yahoo! so I had to Google image search these:



Apparently he's got heterochromia. I imagine it would be quite unsettling to be standing in the batter's box against him.

Cocaine, Collusion and Canada: The Shocking Story of Tim Raines

Thank you, Jenni, for letting me contribute to this Blog. I'll try to be a team player as baseball blogging is not my area my expertise (basketball blogging is my area of expertise). But I'd like to focus as much as possible on baseball players in their physical prime between 1985 and 1993. These were the glory years of baseball before the strike, steroids and loss of the Montreal Expos.

Few of these players captured the imagination quite like Montreal Expo, Chicago White Sox (and briefly New York Yankee) left fielder, switchitter and "speed demon" Tim "Rock" Raines. Raines had a long career, stole a historic number of bases and hit a remarkable number of triples-- the single most exciting play in baseball (the balk is also exciting).

To summarize Raines career and the impact he's had is folly, so let me point out three shocking episodes where this RainesMan was academy award deserving:

1. cocaine. A lot of Major League Baseball players did cocaine in the 80's but only one was called "rock." Raines checked in to rehab in 1982 admitting that he had spent $40,000 in the last nine months on the same drug that would fell Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, and Steve "even a cat has only nine lives" Howe. During grand jury probes 100x more interesting than the steroid probes of the past three years, Raines described keeping a gram in his uniform's back pocket to snort between half-innings. Always carrying cocaine on him created a problem: the great base-runner admitted that's why he started diving head first to steal a base.

2. collusion. In 1986, in the last year of his contract, a new lean, mean and clean Tim Raines won the batting title. On becoming a free agent you would think that the cash would raines in. But Raines was one of the "untouchable eight" a collection of eight top-rate players including "The Hawk" Andre Dawson that were not offered free-agent contracts. It was clear the owners colluded with each others. The NYT filed this punful report from 87:

Mariners' manager, Dick Williams, best summed up that situation. ''It'll snow,'' Williams said, ''before it Raines.'' ...It might now might be said that when it Raines, it pours gasoline on the bonfire of ''collusion'' among major-league club owners not to sign a free agent still wanted by his previous team, as charged by the Major League Baseball Players Association. ''The spectacular way Tim Raines returned,'' said Don Fehr, the Players Association's executive director, ''certainly highlights the absurdity of basically no team wanting him.

An arbitrator eventually ruled Fehr, and Raines, were right. The whole incident contributed to bad blood between labor and management, the '94 strike, the downfall of Major League Baseball, and the current crisis of western economic and cultural life.

3. Canada. Raines spent the first 12 years of his probably-not-going-to-make-the-Hall-of-Fame -but-he-could career in Canada, French Canada, at that. He was right in the middle of the Quebec freedom movement until signing as a free agent in the White Sox in 1991, the same year the White Sox unveiled their black baseball caps.

So desperate were the Expos to make money that in 1984 they sold Tim Raines novelty items we would laugh at today.

Montreal would eventually become the Washington Nationals leading to a parliamentary crisis in Canada.

Cocaine, collusion, and Canada. When you think of the most interesting moments in professional baseball over the last 30 years, you should think of Tim Raines.

most importantly

i hate to be a bad Guestblogger, but for some reason I felt rushed and pressured to post last night.
and I FORGOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THE DREAMBOAT OF ALL DREAMBOATS.
so i'm just gonna post this photo and let interested parties get context from my dear friend THE DIRTY CAJUN.

Favorite Five

I present my MLB favorites:

5. Hideo Nomo

As far as my memory is concerned, this man paved the way for all of the Japanese players who have made it big in America. The first time I recall being excited about going to a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field was in the mid-90's when Nomo and the Dodgers came to play. I remember his pitching windup and the enormous thigh and butt that would rise up against his body before releasing the ball--aside from sumo wrestlers, Nomo might've been the first large Japanese person I'd ever seen.

4. Shinjo Tsuyoshi

Nevermind that Shinjo is not in MLB uniform in any of the photos above. I first came across Shinjo when the San Fransisco Giants were in the World Series back in 2002. I had no idea he was such a character. Last I saw him, he was on a Japanese TV show dedicated to animals, hanging out with young pandas. He was very affectionate towards them, and ended up helping an outcast baby panda socialize with the other "normal" pandas. He even built the panda a wooden slide! I'm not sure if the panda became more social later on, off-camera, but the segment ended with the lonesome panda hanging out with the other pandas for the first time in a long time. All thanks to Shinjo. I cried.

3. José Reyes

MILLION DOLLAR SMILE! MILLION DOLLAR STEALS! I know it's tough being a Mets fan. I live with one, and it can be sad to witness Mets Fandom. But it can't be that sad with that smile! The second time I recall being excited about going to a Cubs game was last spring (second picture above), when José came through with the Mets.

2. Bobby Jenks

Bobby Jenks never lets me down; I'm always confident he'll finish the game pumping his fists. I like how he has the body of a refrigerator but the face of an eight year old boy. In the photo above (redeye photoshopped by Mordecai), I appear with live Bobby on the field, pixelated on the scoreboard, and transmitted on the U.S. Cellular screen. 3 Bobbies and 1 Happy Kei!

1. Miguel Cabrera

Miguel Cabrera and Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez got me all riled up in 2003 when the Marlins won the World Series. It was Miguel Cabrera who won my baseball heart with his boyish, innocent face (see first photo above). The Marlins kept Miguel Cabrera and I rarely heard about him after 2003 except when the Marlins would come through Chicago (second photo above). He's gained a considerable amount of weight; Joe reassures me it's fat and not steroids. I had no idea the Tigers acquired him last year, but I'll blame my ignorance on my absence from the United States for most of last summer.

Coming soon: Dishonorable Mention, Nippon Professional Baseball Picks

Homerun in My Heart: The Gator

I'll be honest, I'm sad Phil beat me to the moustache punch.
I love a man with a moustache, making the 70's baseball's undeniably best era.

But nonetheless, I will start with a little 1970's hometown 'represent':
Ron Guidry--AKA Gator--from Lafayette, LA, looking SHARP with his 'stache.



It should be noted that in addition to being a hometown boy from the 70's, Ron was with the Yankees, giving him three home runs in my heart without even getting to his dreamy core (and before noting that the passing of Torre was also the passing of Ron's pitching career for the Yankees).

I will return with my top 5, which I think instead of being my favs, will be my top 5 feelings about MEN IN UNIFORM.

Here is a possible preview:


just imagine the sound effect to this form fitting photo.
It's something like "GONK!"

Interprofessional Comparison

Hi Sam and Jenni,

Thanks for letting me post on your website. Let’s get right to it.

When Sam compared Casey Blake to some guy in 300, I became lost in a childhood baseball reverie. In particular, I harkened back to how I used to think ex-Yankee and World Series Champion Tino Martinez looks a lot like world famous Canadian porn star Peter North.

Uncanny! I know this because, growing up I was a big fan of the Yankees and my dad used to steal cable.

Here are some other ways in which porn stars are similar to baseball players:

1. They both sometimes wear baseball uniforms
2. They both start out as amateurs
3. They both have to get tested prior to the start of the season
4. Nicknames
5. Surgeries
6. The double switch
7. The sac fly

Well that’s about it. Oh here’s some more visual evidence:

The Greatest Man That Ever Lived?

Did you know Mike Schmidt played 3rd base for the Phillies and is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time? I sure didn't! When I played t-ball we had to fill out these cards with all our important stats like height, weight, and favorite baseball player. My mom probably told me my height and weight. I have no idea who said to write down Mike Schmidt, but I think their reasoning was as follows:

1) He has a mustache*, and so did my dad.
2) He played Third Base, which I think I played, or at least hung out near.
3) He played for the Philadelphia Phillies, the closest Delaware gets to hometown pride, but more importantly it sounds like my name.
4) His shirt was Number 20, where as my birthday is May 21st. Close enough.

All these things are still true, but now after some internet research I can add the fifth reason.



Mike Schmidt is a shimmering Adonis straddling two handsome steeds made of summer rainbows .

According to the Wikipedia, teammate Pete Rose once said, "To have his body, I'd trade him mine and my wife's, and I'd throw in some cash." I have to admit, I didn't even consider his body, just the face and 'stache. Luckily Mr. Schmidt did pose for a photo sans mustache:



He's still got it! But I think the facial hair really makes him.

*I realize the top picture actually features Mr. Schmidt with a beard and not his signature mustache, but I thought it appropriate to include, because it's pretty sexy. He really pulls it off. I think Jeremy Sisto would play him in the movie version of his 1980 World Championship win.

PS. Some people consider a man crying to be a sign of weakness, others might find it a turn on. Share your opinions in the comments.

Guestblogger's Two One Cents

---guestblogger----

I would like to nominate Todd Walker as one of the hottest baseball players in the game.



(Todd Walker and Johnny Damon are NOT the only baseball players I can name. Um, but if they were, would this nomination be worth any less?)

Love, Hillary