Ozzie's world filled with smiles, energy and abilityBy Mike Dodd, USA TODAYCHICAGO - Don't look for any curtains or fiery thrones around this Wizard of Oz. The manager of the American League champion Chicago White Sox hides behind nothing.

Two years after talking his way into his dream job, Ozzie Guillen is granting the wishes of generations of long-suffering baseball fans in Chicago and bringing his team to its first World Series in 46 years — and a chance for its first championship since 1917. Game 1 is Saturday at U.S. Cellular Field here against the Houston Astros.

The 41-year-old Venezuelan, the second foreign-born manager in the World Series (the San Diego Padres' French-born Bruce Bochy was the first), is baseball's most refreshing, unconventional skipper. He's unpredictable in and out of the dugout, candid to a fault at times, outrageously funny and, yes, talks faster than any radar gun can register.

His syntax in his second language is fractured at times, and he uses a 15th-century English profanity as frequently as any. He is to political correctness what Elton John is to Brooks Brothers. "Sometimes I cringe. Sometimes it (ticks) me off. Most of the time, I just laugh," White Sox senior vice president-general manager Ken Williams says of Guillen's outspoken comments.

White Sox brass knew what they were getting with Guillen (GEE-un) — he played shortstop for the team for 13 of his 16 big-league seasons — and accept it as part of the package. The major elements of the mix are a passion for the game that rubs off on his players and strong baseball instincts. Amid the new wave of 20-somethings with Ivy League degrees and devotion to sabermetrics in baseball's front office, here is a man with a seventh/eighth-grade education who follows his gut and has outsmarted a lot of folks.

He went against conventional wisdom in forming his playoff roster, leaving off talented rookie pitcher Brandon McCarthy — 2-1 with a 2.06 ERA in 35 innings in September/October — for 36-year-old Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, a starter by trade who was 1-2 with a 6.60 ERA in 15 innings the last month. Naturally, Hernandez got the three biggest relief outs in the playoffs, pitching out of a bases-loaded, no-out situation at Fenway Park to help eliminate the defending champion Boston Red Sox in the first round.

Managers usually maximize their bullpen use in the playoffs, matching up pitchers with specific hitters from the seventh inning on. Guillen lets his starting pitchers work as long as possible, leading to four consecutive complete games (and victories) from starters against the Los Angeles Angels in the AL Championship Series, the first time that's been done in the postseason in 49 years.

Spend time around him and you invariably ask the question: Is he loco, or crazy like a zorro? "One thing about the people that know me in Venezuela," Guillen says, with a laugh. "They don't feel proud because I'm winning. They feel proud because, 'How the hell can this crazy man be leader of a team?' "

Crazy man? This is the man who took in the family of Gus Polidor, the former Venezuelan major leaguer who was slain in 1995, for 2 1/2 years. The man who contributed $200,000 and spent the 1999-2000 offseason helping rescue and relief efforts after a Venezuelan mudslide killed thousands, who started a charitable foundation in his homeland to help children with AIDS. The man who bolted out of a news conference last week rather than break into tears when asked about countryman and 1950s Sox shortstop Chico Carrasquel, who died in May.

Guillen is considered a player's manager because he tries to keep the clubhouse loose, often spending more time in the players' area than his office. He'll sit in the middle of the clubhouse in a Chicago Fire soccer jersey arguing whether golf is a sport.

But his authority is unchallenged. He sent reliever Damaso Marte home for four games in the heat of the pennant race because Marte showed up late without telling his coaches. Guillen will criticize his players publicly and joke with them about "throwing them under the bus," as in stranding them to be run over.

"When he says crazy stuff in the newspapers, we've already heard it," catcher A.J. Pierzynski says. "That's why no one gets offended. You know where you stand all the time. There's no stabbing in the back."

Guillen says the criticism of players is for their own good. "I don't want them to be excuse players," he says. "If you fail, you fail. Come on. As soon as you make any excuse, you're not a winner."

The tough-talk, tough-love style also applies to his sons, ages 21, 19 and 13. "I tell them, 'You don't like it? Get married and leave the house,' " he says. "Same way with my players. You don't like it, 'Call your agent, and there are 29 other teams to play with.' "

Batting practice time is often his stage, where he banters informally with the media about most any topic and fraternizes with opponents, particularly former teammates or players he has coached. "If you're around Ozzie, you're laughing most of the time," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said last week.

But Guillen also takes losses extremely hard, saying he'll consider quitting if the White Sox win the championship. He says it was a tough year, particularly as the White Sox's 15-game lead in the AL Central Division dwindled to 1 1/2 games in mid-September. "The thing is, I'm stressed every day," he told Copley News Service's Mike Nadel during the team's slide. "Do I have the best job in the world? Yes, because I'm managing the team I love. ... But every time we lose, I feel sick. I (vomit) sometimes. I get mad. I throw things in my office. It makes me crazy."

While Guillen still refuses to rule out early retirement, the White Sox don't expect to be looking for his replacement this winter. "Don't listen to everything that he says," Williams says, with a smile, of Guillen's stories of postgame nausea. "A lot of that is just entertaining you guys (in the media)."

Though Guillen has spent the last 25 summers in the USA, he has never lost some of the habits of Venezuela. How many other big-league managers kiss their sons and macho players on the cheek after a big victory?

Combined with his outgoing personality, though, the culture gap can lead to controversy. In New York this summer, he finished his pregame interviews, then greeted an old friend by jokingly calling him a homosexual and a child molester — a salutation that apparently didn't offend the friend but was reported by a New York writer.

"We have to be really careful here about what to do, when to do it and how to do it," he says of Latino players in the USA. "I can talk about a lot of different things in my country that I can't say here. I can talk about races, about religion and sex preferences. ... That's freedom of speech."

Guillen was born in Ocumare del Tuy, about 25 miles south of Caracas, Venezuela's capital. His mother, a high school principal, and his father, a manager of a General Electric plant, were divorced when he was 10, and he moved with her to the Caracas suburb of Los Teques. "I've lived around education all my life," he says. And yet he never made it to high school.

"I was just hanging around, trying to survive," he says. "I wasn't poor. I grew up, not in the wrong way, I grew up in the hard way. ... I was street smart."

With no knowledge of English and little of the support system Latino players rely on today, Guillen progressed up the Padres chain before being traded to the White Sox in December 1984.

He was a staple at shortstop for the White Sox for 13 years, earning three All-Star team berths, and finished his playing career with Baltimore, Atlanta and Tampa Bay, retiring after the 2000 season. Near the end of his playing career, he knew he wanted to manage and began picking the brains of his skippers, particularly Atlanta's well-respected Bobby Cox.

"When I played for him, I said, 'If you don't mind, I want to learn from you. Can I ask you questions during the game, why are you doing this?' He explained it to me," Guillen says.

He also cites the influence of former White Sox manager Jeff Torborg and former Florida Marlins manager Jack McKeon, coaching under them in Montreal and Florida. The White Sox managing job is the one he always wanted, and he says he never dreamed he'd get it so quickly. When Williams, a former Sox teammate, invited him to Chicago to interview for it, the GM told Guillen up front he had a lot of convincing to do. About an hour into the four-hour interview, Williams knew he'd found his man.

Immediately, Guillen became the face of the club — appearing on the cover of its 2004 yearbook, scorecard and first edition of the game program.

After a winning season, but disappointing second half, in 2004, he urged management to reshape the roster, sacrificing power for more speed, defense and pitching. Power-hitting outfielder Carlos Lee was traded for speedy Scott Podsednik , who didn't hit a home run in the regular season but stole 59 bases and was the catalyst for the new century's version of the Go-Go Sox. Williams used the payroll savings from Lee's contract to patch holes at catcher and on the pitching staff.

The White Sox opened the year winning 27 of their first 36 games and were never in second place any day of the season. On Wednesday, Guillen was named AL manager of the year by The Sporting News, probably the first of several such honors. Asked last week what winning the Series would do, he quipped, "Watch out Mayor Daley. I might be the next mayor."

Actually, Guillen has no interest in politics as a career. He knows The Mouth would get him in too much trouble. But he loves watching news shows and surfs the Web for news from home every day.

During batting practice Wednesday, he pushed aside all baseball questions until a formal news conference. However, he chatted at length about Venezuela and Latin American politics.

His comments last week after he received a congratulatory phone call from controversial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sparked angry reaction from some of his countrymen. "Not too many people like the president, (but) I do. My mom will kill me, but it's an honor," Guillen said at the time.

After the fallout, Guillen said he didn't want his remarks interpreted as an endorsement of Chavez's policies. "I like the man, I don't like his ideas. ... I think he works hard for the country," he said.

Even a number of Cubs fans are grudgingly admitting support, and one entrepreneur is selling a T-shirt for them, with the proclamation "Bi-SOX-ual."

In the midst of the mania, Guillen is trying to be low-key, at least for him. He stayed in the dugout during the clinching celebration in Anaheim, Calif., last weekend, and followed the same tack during his two days off earlier in the week.

"Because of the way I talk, people think I'm crazy, that I'm out on Michigan Avenue (screaming). ... I didn't even go out of my house," he says.

Guillen, who is working toward dual citizenship in the USA, returns to Venezuela every offseason, splitting time between homes in Miami and Caracas. He lives in downtown Chicago during the season but leaves before winter. "I never drive in snow," he says, laughing that he dreads coming to town for the January fan convention.

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