It’s the series that always gets Chicago sports fans talking, and this year it features two of baseball’s mouthiest managers. The always-candid Ozzie Guillen takes his White Sox into Wrigley Field this weekend to take on the Cubs and their foul-tempered skipper, Lou Piniella. What can we say? Guillen may have an 8-4 edge in head-to-head meetings, but they’re just begging for a faceoff.
COACH ON COACH
PINIELLA “The job is demanding enough without having to be putting out fires,” Piniella told USA Today about Guillen in July. “[Ozzie has] a really good heart. It’s a little bit entertainment … but the problem is you can’t keep burning bridges.”
GUILLEN “… somebody asked me who was more famous in Chicago — Lovie Smith, Mike Ditka, Ozzie or Lou,” Guillen told the Tribune in March. “I said, ‘Why do you put Lou here? He hasn’t done [anything] yet in Chicago. Maybe later on in his career, yeah, but right now I think it’s a joke when people think Lou is part of Chicago.”
COACH VS. PLAYER
How did Piniella react when his pitcher, Rod Dibble, called him a liar? By tackling Dibble in the clubhouse and wrestling with him on the ground.
When rookie pitcher Sean Tracey failed to carry out Guillen’s orders to bean a batter, Guillen gave the kid a verbal beatdown in the dugout and demoted him to the minors.
CUBS-SOX RIVALRY
“They’re part of our city, the same way the Cubbies are,” Piniella told the Tribune in March. ” When you play them you want to beat them, obviously, the same way they want to beat us.”
“I hate Wrigley Field,” Guillen said this month. “I don’t say I hate the Cubs. … I have respect for that organization. But I hate to go there. I do. It’s the way I feel.”
WINNER As Guillen put it earlier this year, “I own Chicago.” Until Piniella brings a World Series title to Chicago, this is Ozzie’s town.
