Who cares more about the White Sox than Ozzie?

For reasons I will explain below, Ozzie Guillen is the Billy Martin of the Chicago White Sox. Okay, Billy Martin without the alcoholism and bar fights with marshmellow salesmen, but the analogy still fits.          

What ties the two life-long baseball men together is their unflagging love for their teams. Nobody cared more about the New York Yankees than the late Billy Martin and nobody suffers more when the White Sox don’t play up to their abilities than Ozzie Guillen.          

As players, both Billy and Ozzie were average players at best who used their considerable will and observation skills to get every possible edge. As managers, both men learned their craft by watching their Hall of Fame skippers (Casey Stengal and Tony LaRussa, respectively) play an inside game of baseball – using every possible trick in the book and every single edge they could muster.          

Ozzie, like Billy, played with a seething anger and manages the game with a fury just barely under the surface. And like Billy Martin, Ozzie Guillen insists on a code of baseball ethics for his players.           

Like Billy, Ozzie can be a lightning rod for his team. He will take all of the heat for his players with verbal histrionics, protecting them from the pressure of the pennant race and the probing questions of the press. 

And yet, if a player fails to live up to that code, both men would unleash that fury on the offending player. Billy constantly got in Reggie Jackson’s face, while Ozzie Guillen insisted on trading Carlos Lee after he failed to take out an opponent on a slide at second base.          

The ghost of Billy Martin lives on, with nearly every one of Ozzie’s utterance to that same press. Ozzie being Ozzie is simply shorthand for saying that he’s capable of saying anything and offending practically anyone.          

One more thing. Both men are winners. The Yanks won under Martin and the White Sox’ only pennant in the last century came with Ozzie at the helm.

Of course, Billy Martin was hired and fired many times by George Steinbrenner. Is Ozzie on the verge of being dismissed by the White Sox?

Ozzie would never admit to taking Billy Martin as an example, but I can’t help but wonder if Ozzie doesn’t have much the same firing and re-hiring history in his baseball future. If General Manager Kenny Williams finally does cut ties with Ozzie, who’s to say that Williams’ own job is any more secure?          

A strong case could be made that Ozzie has done a far better job than his immediate supervisor. Ozzie didn’t discard Carlos Lee and Aaron Rowand. Ozzie didn’t sign Jim Thome and Nick Swisher. Kenny Williams built a team that’s been sorely lacking in offense and shaky in the pitching staff. Ozzie’s just the guy who’s been left to cobble together the disparate parts into another pennant.          

And oh, by the way, Ozzie’s team is still in first place. Before Williams suggests that he’s grown tired of Ozzie’s antics, he might take a look at the history books. The next White Sox GM’s first task might be to re-hire Mr. Guillen.