Jerry Crasnick from espn.com on Ozzie and Kenny

[Mplssoxfan 0]

Link.

 

As a duo, these guys run out some of the liveliest baseball dialogue since Abbott and Costello.

 

• Williams on the pressures of the job: "Boston. New York. Chicago. Philadelphia. These are very demanding sports towns. If you don't recognize that one basic principle, it will swallow you up. So I wake up every day knowing that to a large segment of our fan base, I'm the village idiot.''

 

• Guillen on the lack of respect accorded Williams: "People forgot how good Kenny was for four years. People forgot he didn't finish worse than second. It's a funny thing about this game. We win the World Series and Kenny makes three key moves to winning, and the guy in Cleveland [shapiro] wins the Baseball America Executive of the Year. That's a bunch of s---.''

 

• Williams on the pecking order in Chicago: "Our fans don't care about injuries and other things that happened last season. It's all about what you do on the field. There's only one sports team in Chicago that will get a pass. I won't name them. But it ain't us.''

 

• Guillen on his "hate-love'' relationship with Williams: "Last year Kenny and me stuck together. We fought together. We sat together. We were upset together. We blamed each other. We found out who was behind us and who wasn't. Ninety-nine percent of the people weren't behind us. Hey man, this game is a bunch of front-runners. If you're good, they kiss your butt. If not, you're horse s---.''

 

Much more at link.

[knightni 396]

Williams on the pressures of the job: So I wake up every day knowing that to a large segment of our fan base, I'm the village idiot.

 

Williams on the pecking order in Chicago: There's only one sports team in Chicago that will get a pass. I won't name them. But it ain't us.

 

Those two quotes are awesome.

[elrockinMT 493]

I wish they wanted to win more

[Disco72 0]

Great article... honest and doesn't have any remarks about how the Sox will suck anyway - it lets the reader make up his or her mind.

[DBAHO 4]

Well at least Ozzie was right about KW not winning GM of the year back in 2005 instead of Shapiro (not that I'm saying Shapiro is a bad GM, he's obviously a very good one).

[The Critic 2]

Well at least Ozzie was right about KW not winning GM of the year back in 2005 instead of Shapiro (not that I'm saying Shapiro is a bad GM, he's obviously a very good one).

Yeah, it's one thing if KW tweaks an already good team and wins the Series.

He made some pretty major changes, as well as seemingly minor changes that turned out to be major (Hermanson comes to mind).

Kenny was absolutely the Executive of the Year in 2005. And he was robbed of it.

[joeynach 0]

good article, I really enjoyed it

[daa84 41]

jerry crasnick is a really good writer....hes as good of a writer as gammons is given credit for, but he actually you know, writes stuff...oh and he always responds to my emails, which is a plus

[YASNY 14]

Good read. Thanks for posting that link.

[Texsox 1,691]

Nice article.

[lostfan 393]

It's nice to see a baseball article on ESPN from a writer who isn't a complete East Coast homer.