southsider2k5 Posted March 31, 2005 Share Posted March 31, 2005 Dear White Sox Fans, Opening Day is just about here - finally. The last week of Spring Training is always tough. Your emotions are mixed. Everyone is excited about getting the season started, but at the same time you also have the final roster cuts to get down to 25 men. Sending guys to the minors is always hard, but especially when it comes down to the last couple of cuts each spring. Telling someone he is not going to make the Major League club might be the hardest thing about my job. We've had a great spring. Other than a few scares like Mark Buehrle's sore left foot or Aaron Rowand getting hit by pitches, we have stayed healthy. In some ways, that is always your biggest concern as a manager. You want everyone to stay healthy during the spring. I hope all of our fans share my excitement about this season. We can't wait to get things started in Chicago on April 4. The approach I have been stressing to our players and staff this year is to take each day as it comes. The temptation is to start looking ahead at the next series, the next road trip or the next homestand. You start trying to count up wins and losses months in advance. My message to the team is that we need to fight that temptation and focus on the game we are playing today. A baseball season is so long - 162 games - that it is easy to lose your focus. I do believe it is not the way you start a season, but the way you finish, that is most important. The key to April is to not dig too deep a hole for your club. If you bury yourself in April and May, it becomes that much tougher to survive the slumps that every team faces at some point during the summer. My goal is that we come out of April and May with a cushion that allows us to survive the struggles, or even better, to take advantage of that hot streak in June, July and August. I have really enjoyed watching our team come together this spring. To a man, every one of our new players has really fit in. I am very pleased with our chemistry, even if you sometimes have to know four languages -English, Spanish, Japanese and my own personal mix. We started out Spring Training looking at a lot of young players, and several impressed us. As our regulars began to play more and more innings, you saw us be very aggressive on the basepaths and at the plate. You are going to see that aggressiveness all season long. Along with my coaching staff, I wanted to see who could handle the bat and how everyone ran the bases. The best way for us to learn the abilities and limits of our players was to be extra aggressive on the bases. I am willing to make overly aggressive outs in March to learn something that might help win a game in September. From Day 1, I want this White Sox team to feature good starting pitching, be aggressive and exciting on the basepaths and be solid fundamentally. If we do those three things, I believe we will consistently win games. We need our pitching to stay healthy. I really like the balance of our offense and believe we will be much more consistent from day to day this season. Our bullpen's depth will be a strength on this team. Finally, I think it is important to remember how much of a learning process the start of this season will be for Tadahito Iguchi. He has done a terrific job this spring adjusting to major-league baseball and just to life in America. I need to be patient with his even bigger adjustment to Major League Baseball's regular season. I hope this gives you a sense of what we have accomplished this spring and our excitement about the start of the season on Monday. I know many of you will be at the ballpark for Opening Day, and I will see others of you as the season gets rolling. Thanks for all the support, and let's get this season going. Sincerely, Ozzie Guillen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greasywheels121 Posted March 31, 2005 Share Posted March 31, 2005 Really cool, but I really wish that he could have written that in his accent. It would've been a lot better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CWSGuy406 Posted March 31, 2005 Share Posted March 31, 2005 Four f'n days... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjm676 Posted March 31, 2005 Share Posted March 31, 2005 (edited) Go Oz. Although, it would've been even better if he called us "kids." Edited March 31, 2005 by robinventura23 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jabroni Posted March 31, 2005 Share Posted March 31, 2005 (edited) I am very pleased with our chemistry, even if you sometimes have to know four languages -English, Spanish, Japanese and my own personal mix. Edited March 31, 2005 by Jabroni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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