Ozzie Guillen was voted as the manager for whom players would least like to play:
In an upcoming issue of Sports Illustrated, 26 percent of major leaguers polled voted for the combustible Piniella, followed by Guillen at 21 percent. St. Louis' Tony LaRussa was next at 10 percent, followed by the Los Angeles Dodgers' Joe Torre and Cleveland's Eric Wedge at four percent apiece.
Ozzie, predictably, does not care one iota:
"Tony was No. 3 and he's won a couple titles. Looks like players picked old-school guys. Maybe they don't like old school, don't like to be told what to do. It doesn't bother me. If 59 percent of my players say they like me, that's good enough for me."
No, Ozzie, they didn't just pick old school guys. Bobby Cox is old school and he isn't on the list. Neither is Charlie Manuel. To me it looks like they picked guys who routinely get into public feuds with their own players, create a circus-like atmosphere and throw people under the bus after they've left the team.
Perhaps there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I'm guessing that Ozzie Guillen doesn't care about that either.
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Uh...................................when is 21% more than 26% ? Seems Pinella is the guy that players would most not want to play for.........not Guillen.
Guillen is an OK manager. Maybe it's the prima-donna players that don't like being told that they're prima donnas ?
How did Joe Torre make this list? Every manager has his detractors, but if you can't play for Joe Torre...my god...Did Gary Sheffield get to vote ten times? Ozzie talks to the press too much in anger, but I enjoy his candor. I figure most of the time he's just trying to light a fire under his lackadaisical bunch. I don't know about ragging on the Cubs fans who keep showing up for the sheer love of (day) baseball, but I think it's hysterical when he says "if you see Beckham here, you know we're in trouble." What is he? Six for seven this week? Ozzie's yap is fun. No offense to guys like Jerry Manuel, Ken Macha and the silent majority of managers in this game, but it's good theatre when a manager distracts from poor on field performances. I like Ozzie even if he is a little crazy, hot blooded, arrogant and an impulse driven, manage by the gut, old school manager. The players are babied enough. What I wouldn't give to sit on the bench for the major league minimum...not only is $400K a ton of money short term, but the connections you make set you up for life in any number of capacities. Who cares if they get called out every once in a while for poor play? I'm not in favor of embarrassing anyone in the press, but Ozzie does a good job of embarrassing himself in the process so it's kind of a double edged sword. How deadly boring were the White Sox before Ozzie started managing them? Now they have a little current history (2005) and are in the national headlines every month for better or for worse. I'm not a White Sox fan, but they should have their own Ozzfest in his honor each year as far as I can tell...he helped bring that once moribound franchise back from the dead to the point where they matter once again...Rock On Ozzie...
I'm guessing Torre's name is there as some residual resentment of Yankees players for what he wrote in his book. Weak sauce, for the most part, but at least Johnny Damon and some others felt like Torre was out of line.
Ozzie is a bigoted homophobe and a jerk.
(To the extent that I can tell such things from 2,000 miles away)
If 21 percent of players named Ozzie, that means 79 percent didn't. To me that doesn't mean nobody wants to play for him as the title suggests. I'm sure the current White Sox don't mind cashing their checks and playing for him.
21% voted for him as the worst manager to play for. That means 79% thought someone else was worse. not that they liked him, or that they would play for him. If they asked players to say which 5 managers they would not want to play for, I guarantee he would be on ALMOST all of them.