Saturday, June 7, 2008

Remember How Ozzie Guillen Is a Crazy Asshole?

Why hasn't this guy been fired yet? Oh yeah- because the most prominent media member calling for that course of action, Jay Mariotti, is a fucking dunderhead. I love the fact that since Guillen publicly complained about his offense and subsequently drew the wrath of Jay and others (not going to link my original post, it's two below this one), the White Sox have won five games in a row while scoring more than eight runs per game. If Tony La Russa or Jim Leyland had said what he said, and then seen their teams go on a streak like this, there'd have been followup stories galore about what brilliant motivators they are. In this case, we'll hear exactly nothing until the next time Guillen does something mildly offensive. Well, fuck that. Leyland is a crusty old know-nothing who has been known to put guys like Neifi Perez and his .295 OBP at the top of his lineup and La Russa is a horrible-haircut-wearing drunk driver (actually a decent manager too, but don't try to stop me, I'm on my soap box here). As I said in my original post about this subject, I'm neither a "Blizzard" nor a White Sox fan. I just get tired of hearing the guy get excoriated for pretty much no other reason besides the fact that he's not nice to the guys writing the stories. According to this admittedly small sample size of games, he seems to know how to motivate a team. At the very least it would be dumb for the Sox to fire him anytime soon. Shut up, Jay. Shut up, everyone who Jay quoted as agreeing with him in his latest article. And shut up, Amy Winehouse. You're horrendous.

9 comments:

Derpsauce said...

Haha...wow. I never really put two-and-two together there. That's fucking key....if any of the media favorite managers had gone off like that and "caused" the team to go on an offensive surge, it would be fucking postered all over PTI, let alone Chicago-based newspapers. The media's role as a gatekeeper is an unjustifiedly powerful one.

CitizenX said...

Tramp doesn't really begin to cover Winehouse. However, she has legit singing chops and has taken enough drugs to kill several small elephants and Chris Farley and is curiously still alive at 42 pounds.

Human or not? Discuss.

Tonus said...

What? No mention of Joe Torre? SLACKER!

Chris W said...

a.) on the one hand, I agree with you Larry, in terms of your title at least.

FIRE OZZIE

b.) on the other hand, La Russa may possibly be an overrated manager. It took horrendous pitcher fielding to win him a WS in STL, and with the A's he three times went into the WS with the heavily favored team in Oakland, but the only time he won was against a much worse SF team (during an earthquake no less).

I've made arguments time and again that those A's teams that lost to Cincy and LA shouldn't have been so heavily favored (as LA had much better pitching and Cincy debatably had a better team plain and simple) but it should also be noted that many disagree and make compelling arguments as to why La Russa's not just "not a good manager" but also may be a bad manager.

It should also be noted that he doesn't seem to care about whether or not his players take steroids

in short, fire Ozzie

larry b said...

It took horrendous pitcher fielding to win him a WS in STL,

And we can conclusively say that without those Detroit errors, there's absolutely no way the Cardinals win the series.

I've made arguments time and again that those A's teams that lost to Cincy and LA shouldn't have been so heavily favored (as LA had much better pitching and Cincy debatably had a better team plain and simple) but it should also be noted that many disagree and make compelling arguments as to why La Russa's not just "not a good manager" but also may be a bad manager.

OK, so your point is that opinions on La Russa are split. Fine. Are there any managers out there who don't fit that description? (I mean, any that are universally regarded as great?) I used to think he was so-so, until I read a couple articles/blog posts which showed that his "batting the pitcher 8th" trick actually has created extra runs for the Cards over the course of the past few years. He also has a winning career postseason record, and has won 2 (out of 5) WSes he's been to. I'm fairly confident in my opinion that he's an above average manager at very least.

The steroid thing? Meh. What managers DO have a problem with that?

Chris W said...

Are there any managers out there who have lost two World Serieses handily with heavily favored teams?

Or who have gotten swept out in embarrassing fashion by a wild card team?

Or have yet to have a convincing WS title to their record despite helming some of the best-regarded teams of their time?

What I'm saying is that a lot of people think Larussa sucks. I don't necessarily agree, but among people who think outside the ESPN box, I'd probably be in the minority.

It's all beside the point. The main point is: Fire Ozzie.

larry b said...

Are there any managers out there who have lost two World Serieses handily with heavily favored teams?

Try: Torre, Joe. Twice in three years just like La Russa. Only he didn't win one inbetween. And one of those losses was in embarrassing fashion, to a 92 win Wild Card team. At least the 2004 Red Sox were a 98 win Wild Card team (3rd best record in the majors) with a cast of legitimate superstars.

In any case, you know it's ridiculous to make a big deal out of those two series losses. Were the Oakland teams of the early 2000s that failed in all those LDSes terrible? Were those losses all the managers' faults? It's small sample size taken to pretty distant extremes. Are the five (now six) games the Sox have won since Ozzie's tirade also a small sample size? Sure. But I'm using them to justify that Ozzie is a good motivator, while you're trying to use La Russa's WS "failures" (He only won the pennant those years!) to claim that he is an overall poor manager. It doesn't equate.

Chris W said...

Torre's got 2 more rings than Larussa despite having about zero more WS appearances (or maybe one?)

Anyway, Torre's overrated.

larry b said...

And now I look like a fool, because Sportscenter/Baseball Tonight/multiple sports websites are running pieces about Ozzie's move today. Although I maintain that La Russa or Leyland would be getting even more credit.