He has more fun than anyone else who plays the game. For a lot of players, it’s a job. Ozzie Guillen doesn’t fall into that category. I’m not saying other guys don’t enjoy it. But if they do, they don’t show it.”
–Yankees coach Don Zimmer
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“Where I come from (a small town in Venezuela), all the kids want to be big-league ballplayers,” Ozzie Guillen was saying Monday night at Comiskey Park. “I have been the only one to have that opportunity. That’s why I have to enjoy every minute.”
Guillen, 33, is in his 13th major-league season and is the latest in a half-century of outstanding White Sox shortstops. Before him there were Luis Aparicio, Chico Carrasquel and Luke Appling. Aparicio and Appling are in the Hall of Fame.
It isn’t likely Guillen is ticketed for Cooperstown, principally because he hasn’t been a strong enough hitter. But there have been few, if any, better fielding shortstops during the last two decades.
According to Guillen, he has been “very lucky”–beginning on Dec. 6, 1984, when he was traded to the White Sox. It was among the best deals in Sox history, although only a few people knew it at the time, including then-General Manager Roland Hemond and Jerry Krause, the current general manager of the Bulls but then a Sox scout.
“I don’t blame the people who knocked the deal,” Guillen said. “No one knows who I am, a minor-leaguer, and they trade a Cy Young winner to get me.”
LaMarr Hoyt had won 24 games two seasons before when he led the Sox to a division title. The baseball world was stunned.
The response of Bill Rigney, an astute observer who had managed four big-league clubs, was typical.
“You never trade a horse for a minor-league prospect,” Rigney said.
“I was in Venezuela,” Guillen recalled. “They called my house–(manager) Tony La Russa and Hemond. Tony talked to me in Spanish. He told me, `We’re very happy to have you.’ “
Guillen wasn’t so sure. He had put in 3 1/2 seasons with San Diego, eventually graduating to Triple A. He appeared destined to someday replace Garry Templeton as the Padres’ regular shortstop.
What Guillen didn’t know was Krause had been tailing him for two years. “He’s our man,” Krause told Hemond. “I think we should move fast.”
In retrospect, Sox management may have known Hoyt had been experimenting with drugs. Subsequently, Hoyt was suspended several times. He dropped out of baseball two years later.
Guillen was chosen the American League’s 1985 Rookie of the Year and established a club-record low, for shortstops, with only 12 errors. He batted .273 and led all big-league shortstops in fielding percentage.
Guillen was delighted with his performance and with his new teammates.
“I was with a bunch of pros,” he said.
He rattled off the names of some of his more prominent teammates: Tom Seaver, Greg Walker, Harold Baines, and coaches Jim Leyland, Joe Nossek, Eddie Brinkman, and La Russa.
Over the years, Baines has been Guillen’s No. 1 hero, which is somewhat surprising because they have opposite personalities. Guillen is an irrepressible talker and joker. Baines has been among baseball’s foremost silent men.
“He’s the guy I look up to,” Guillen explained. “If any of my kids wants to be a ballplayer, I want him to be like Harold Baines.
“I’m the type when I do something good I get real excited. Pumped up. And when I do something that’s not too good, I have a tendency to lay myself down.
“Harold is always the same. He never gets too excited. Or too down. I wish I had his discipline.”
Guillen also had his usual kind words for Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
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“Sometimes I get in trouble because I always say the truth,” Guillen insisted. “He’s the best owner. I can’t picture myself playing for anyone else. When he says something, he means it. I have always been fair with him, and he’s always been very fair with me.”
Now if only Albert Belle and Frank Thomas start hitting, they too will be fair to Reinsdorf and the Sox might begin playing to their potential.