Sox Go Back to the "We Hate the Cubs" Well Again

A lot happened over the weekend.  There were some fantastic college basketball games, tremendous upsets that killed bracket predictions everywhere, Tiger was on a major sports channel talking about things in which I have long since lost interest, I may be able to finally afford having these chest pains that radiate out into my arms treated by someone who may have actually graduated from medical school, a Guillen made news by mouthing off about Kenny Williams and it shockingly wasn't Ozzie, and Jake Peavy decided he hates the Cubs.

Since no one cares about the health of other people's NCAA brackets, I'll spare you all my complaints and simply pass on my congratulations to the Big East for taking the title of Most Disappointing Performance by a Major Conference from the Big Ten, who had held that title for the previous twenty years.

Speaking of health, my opinions of the health care reform bill would be so embarassingly uninformed I will simply refer you to the comments section of any mainstream story that mentions it.  Unless, of course, you are looking for reasoned, intellectual debate with correctly spelled words and DISCREET USE OF ALL CAPS, in which case I can't help you.

Tiger is still sorry, I guess.  I don't know.  I don't care.

So that leaves us with our friends down on the Southside who have been making their P.R. department work overtime lately.

First, Oney Guillen, son of Ozzie, made some comments on his Twitter feed that the White Sox (translation: Kenny Williams) didn't like.  I took a look at Oney's feed from the week leading up to the mess.  Like his father, it is a potpourri of a loose grasp of the English language and its spelling and grammar rules:

"9:47 PM Mar 16th - Poker with the family was nice

1:12 PM Mar 16th - Hit and run from oz man. Kotsay very well done. If we are agressive we r dangerous

1:03 PM Mar 16th - @cst_sox and a pic of u in vegas. Would be u and jay m canoddling behind a craps table. Both with ur pasty white culos

12:34 PM Mar 16th @cst_sox I do what I got to do to get a w. I help the team. What u do for us jc?

6:07 PM Mar 15th - Pods is with royals and getting picked off. Sox fans are glad they don't have to c that anymore.

11:51 PM Mar 14th - A guy on a bar serenading his girl to thong song that's a first by far

9:24 PM Mar 14th - Andruw loves his flip camera he loves it

8:44 PM Mar 13th - All of a sudden asian r cool?

7:03 PM Mar 13th - Eating alone at the wynn. Good thing I entertain myself"

So, he made a flip remark about Asians which could piss some people off, and he had some back and forth going with the Sun-Times' Sox beat reporter, Joe Cowley.  I don't know what their relationship is with each other, but it seems that they have a banter that goes back and forth without any real animosity.  This doesn't appear to be Paul Sullivan vs. Milton Bradley II.

But someone on the Sox didn't like it and they began monitoring Oney's tweets.  Oney, being an apple that didn't fall far from the tree, took umbrage and began tweeting out some comments that were decidely less benign towards the White Sox organization:

12:13 PM Mar 17th - I love it how people are monitoring my tweets like I'm someone important. Everyone is entitled to there own opinion

11:16 AM Mar 19th - Remember this day march 19 2010. Mark my words

11:25 AM Mar 19th - I guess not all employees are held to same standard. Maybe if I left for 2 weeks then came back I can continue to work

11:26 AM Mar 19th - When I grow up I want my kids to like me and love me not hate me and bad mouth me all over the place

11:43 AM Mar 19th - I hope the dorks aren't running the organization or else were fucked. 3 geeks who never played baseball a day in there life telling expe ...

11:43 AM Mar 19th - a day in there life telling experts what to do

1:50 PM Mar 19th - Oh shit we r getting beat. I'm sure someone cares

Shortly after a meeting with Kenny Williams, Ozzie advised Oney to resign his position in the Sox scouting video department.  Ozzie blew off reporters after his team lost to the Cubs on Friday, and the story hit the media.  TWITTER FIGHT!!!

Of course, Oney is not the first person in the history of the world to lose their job because an employer didn't like what was being said on a personal blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc.  It is understandable that the White Sox wouldn't want a young, less mature member of the Guillen family publishing his stream of consciousness out into the public forum of Twitter.  Let's face it, there wasn't anything to really get upset about yet, but that was a ticking time bomb and everyone in that organization damn well knew it.

The problem is that they exacerbated the situation by attempting to control it, and now instead of Oney and his approximately 150 followers as of March 16th hearing about his thoughts on the thong song, Oney now has almost 1,000 followers (including members of the media like Dave Kaplan, who immediately hit the waves with a breathless criticism of the Guillens on WGN on Friday night) who are actively paying attention to his feed where he rips on the White Sox and Kenny Williams in every other tweet.  Way to keep that under wraps and protect your image, guys. (Add sarcastic clapping.)

So, I'm hypothesizing that the Sox public relations folks got together and decided that the story wouldn't go away on its own unless they could somehow start a battle with their evil nemesis, the Cubs.  But how?  I imagine the idea evolved something like this:

PR Director:  We have to start diverting attention away from this ridiculous Oney Guillen bullshit.

PR Rep A:  Do any of the Cubs have Twitter feeds we could try to bait into a battle of words?

PR Rep B:  Well, there's Randy Wells.

PR Rep A:  Who the hell is Randy Wells?

PR Director:  Seriously? No Lou? No Dempster? No Soriano? Not even Theriot?  Since when does he pass up an opportunity to talk as a representative of the team?

PR Rep B:  There is a Fake Ronnie Woo.

PR Director:  Oh Christ. This is not going to work. What else have you got?

PR Rep A:  What if we had Jake Peavy talk about how much he hates the Cubs?  That always stirs up some bullshit nonsense that the media and moron fans can fixate on, plus it will endear him to Sox fans who think he's only here because a trade didn't work out with the Cubs.

PR Rep B:  Here we go again.

PR Rep A:  What?

PR Rep B:  That is your answer for EVERYTHING.  The Cubs sell more tickets, "Why don't we have Steve Stone make fun of Milton?" The Cubs TV ratings are higher, "Why don't we tell Ozzie to talk about the rats at Wrigley again?"  Buerhle, Pierzynski, Jenks.  Where does it end?  I mean I know our fans aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, but the toothless guy with the mullet and undersized Federal Boob Inspector t-shirt is going to be able to read that play.

PR Director: What's wrong with a Federal Boob.... look, nevermind.  We need something and we need something fast.  Do you have anything better?

PR Rep B:  There has to be something... there just has to be.

PR Rep A:  I'll admit this plan lacks in originality, but Oney is out there tweeting away.  He just tweeted that Lou Piniella is hanging with him and Ozzie at the Blackhawks game and that Lou supports them.

PR Director:  Holy hell. What is his follower count up to? 

PR Rep B:  823 and rising faster than Bobby Jenks' cholesterol.  Damn it. Let's just tell Peavy to let it slip that he hates the Cubs.  And the Twins.  Let 'em have it with both guns.

PR Director:  Fine. We'll go with the Peavy thing.  Make sure he's chewing a lot of tobacco when he's making the comments and make sure he spits anytime he mentions the Cubs specifically.

PR Rep A & PR Rep B: You got it.

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UPDATE
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Ozzie is not happy that Oney has been making the sports talkshow rounds to talk about his Twitter account and the White Sox.  According to Patrick Mooney at CSNChicago:

“He hurt my feelings a little bit because I told him that’s enough – don’t talk anymore,” Guillen said before Monday’s 9-5 loss to the Royals. “When your father says, ‘Don’t do it’ and all of a sudden you do it, you’re not respecting what I say and it hurt my feelings a little bit...

The manager met with the media in his Camelback Ranch office for 20 minutes Saturday morning because he thought that would close the issue and everyone could talk about baseball again. Guillen doesn’t want to address this controversy again.

“(If) he feels betrayed by the White Sox by the way they treated him, that’s his own opinion,” Guillen said. “The White Sox (didn’t) fire my kid – I did. If they want to give him a second chance, third chance, fourth chance, I don’t believe in that. I did it to set an example because we got to respect our bosses.”

Good luck with not addressing it again, Ozzie.  By the way, Oney is up to four digits in followers with 1,024 as of 6:30 PM this evening.  He had 153 on Friday morning.  That is a 563% increase over the weekend.

Quick, somebody tell Andruw Jones to say he thinks Wrigley Field is a shithole.