Chicago – At Jim’s Original sausage stand, a famous South Side dive where the mustard has flowed for nearly 100 years, they never close.
Sort of like Ozzie Guillen’s mouth.
The biggest hot dog in Chicago manages the White Sox.
Guillen is open 24/7 for outrageous baseball chatter. The World Series has been turned into his personal Oz Fest.
Two hours before first pitch of Game 2, Guillen leaned forward intensely in his seat of the third-base dugout and waved a finger 8 inches from my nose.
“I might not have a long managing career,” Guillen told me early on a Sunday when the White Sox would go on to beat Houston 7-6. “This might be my last chance, but I’m going to do it my way. Because I’m going to get fired my way.”
I had offered the free advice that Guillen had better win a championship. And do it pronto. Because his politically incorrect bluntness is hazardous to job security.
This suggestion lit up Guillen like a firecracker. You would have thought I had done something crazy stupid to provoke the skipper. Like tease him about his given name: Oswaldo.
“If you going to shoot me with bullets, don’t expect me to throw flowers to you,” Guillen said. “I’m going to give you bullets back.”
Guillen goes off more regularly than elevated trains from the Chicago Loop. The laughter and brashness never stop rolling from his Venezuelan mouth.
“A lot of managers get fired quick, because they don’t have the guts to tell players what to do because (stars) make $25 million,” Guillen said.
“A lot of people hate me. Few people love me. But they all respect me.”
Ask the Wizard of Oz anything. He will say anything. Tell you his eighth-grade education trumps a Harvard diploma, insist singer Michael Jackson could look good wearing a glove for the Sox and argue Wrigley Field, the beloved home of the crosstown Cubbies, is a rat trap.
“I hate Wrigley Field,” said Guillen, blaspheming a Chicago icon. “I love it when the game starts. But before the game, after the game, it’s the worst field in baseball.
“It’s uncomfortable to go there. I no say I hate playing against the Cubs. I hate going to Wrigley Field. It makes me a bad man? Ask the players. … They have to go hit in the batting cages where 20,000 rats crawl around at night.”
Baseball purists complain about Guillen. Some go too far, dissing the accent of the first Latino manager to write the lineup card at a World Series.
“Nobody can understand what Ozzie says,” said Guillen, mocking the ignorance of criticism that has stung his ears. “That’s racist.”
It all rolls off Guillen like rain. Pressure of a big game? Hanging in the dugout with him is akin to eavesdropping as George Lopez warms his comedic chops in the green room.
“In the country I come from, we can talk about anything: religion, color of people,” Guillen said. “Here (in the United States) you have to be real, real careful what you say. Because somebody will not like what you say.”
When Guillen leaves the Windy City, ballpark flags will hang limp on their staffs for the first time since he started playing shortstop for the Sox in 1985.
“Ozzie is the Hispanic Jackie Mason,” White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf said. “You don’t take anything he says seriously.”
The joke is on baseball in Chicago.
After Guillen was hired late in 2003 to kick up some dust with the Sox, nobody realized the method to his madness until he had set the city’s sports culture on its ear, turned misfits into winners and spoken to disenfranchised local kids looking for a new hero.
“Who would have believed a bunch of jokers like us would be in the World Series?” catcher A.J. Pierzynski said.
Surprise, surprise, surprise. With a walk-off solo homer in the ninth inning, Scott Podsednik staked the White Sox to a 2-0 lead in the Series. Two more wins, and these jokers will be world champions.
“This is a Cubs town,” Guillen said. “I want to change it.”
The great and powerful Oz has spoken. Doubt him at your own risk.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
