Anaheim, Calif. – There are managers moving up the lifetime victory charts, such as Tony La Russa and Bobby Cox.
Some skippers manage to become popular over time. Joe Torre and Dusty Baker are two who come to mind.
Other managers are so quirky in personality they become caricatures of themselves. Leaders such as Jack McKeon, Casey Stengel and Jim Leyland.
In the long history of big-league baseball, however, rarely does a manager come with star power. In Ozzie Guillen, the Chicago White Sox have an exception.
Check out the White Sox’s nondescript, often punchless batting lineup. Try to find a name, other than “El Duque” from that phenomenal pitching staff, known in households outside Chicago’s south side.
Guillen is the star of the best team in baseball. Like Tommy Lasorda and Leo Durocher in generations before, Guillen possesses a gift of gab and a team that can back it up.
“He’s going to speak his mind,” White Sox pitcher Jon Garland said. “What he’s worried about is these 25 guys. Taking care of us, treating us well, giving us respect, and we give him the same thing right back. But when it comes to saying what he wants to say, nothing’s going to hold him back.”
Even with his team off to its stunning start, Guillen dared the fate of baseball’s gods by ripping into past stars Magglio Ordoñez and Frank Thomas, the latter of whom is still with the team rehabilitating from injury.
Most people in positions of authority, especially in today’s media-saturated big-sports environment, have become increasingly reluctant to transfer honest thoughts to slippery tongues.
“As long as I don’t hurt anybody and as long as I tell the truth, I can live with it,” Guillen said. “If you aren’t close to me or around me every day, you can say whatever you want to say about me. The only people I really care about is my 25 players.”
In the sportswriting business, Guillen is considered good copy, refreshingly direct in a world full of paranoid rhetoric. There is always peril in candidness, however. Baseball people have seen guys like Ozzie. Flamboyant personalities tend to make an early impact but eventually flame out. See Tony Peña, late of the Royals.
The White Sox entered Saturday with a big league-best 33-16 mark, but not everyone believes. There is a faction not only waiting for the White Sox to fall – and with a lineup that has Aaron Rowand batting third, it’s possible – but ready to pin the blame on Guillen and his rambunctious spirit.
“You’re from Colorado,” he said. “Everybody thought Jim Leyland was a genius. He quit. If you don’t have a good team, you’re not going to win. I don’t care who you are.
“With all due respect, from the bottom of my heart, Mr. Joe Torre wasn’t a good manager until he got to the New York Yankees.”
Indeed, Torre was fired three times as manager before he won four World Series in five years with the Yankees.
“Thank you,” Guillen said. “People say he’s a good manager. He is, but if he doesn’t have the players he’s not going to win. Lou Piniella, one of my heroes, Lou was a genius (before becoming manager of Tampa Bay). Sparky Anderson, same stuff.
“The only way you’re a good manager is when the players want to play for you. When the players respect you. A player is a free agent and decides he wants to play for a certain manager, that’s a good manager. But the game within the lines, you’re not going to matter a whole lot.”
Keep telling it like it is, Ozzie. Chances are a manager who can lace outspokenness with humility and sense is a manager who is more than just talk.
Mike Klis can be reached at 303-820-5440 or mklis@denverpost.com.
