White Sox 4, Blue Jays 3: So Long, Ozzie Guillen.

"He's garbage, still garbage, going to die as garbage." -- Ozzie Guillen on contemptible sportswriter and convicted stalker Jay Mariotti (June, 2006)

It looked like the story of last night's game was going to be how the Blue Jays left the bases loaded in the top of the second only for the Tyler Flowers to hit a three-run shot off of Dustin McGowan in the home half of the inning, because really, for the longest time after that, nothing happened. Kyle Drabek got touched up for a run in a hard-luck seventh, and the Blue Jays finally got on the board in the eighth on a mere groundout, but things didn't really get interesting (well, baseball is always totally interesting, but you know what I'm saying) until White Sox closer Sergio Santos came out for the ninth and threw forty pitches (!), allowing a pair of runs on a David Cooper double and walking pretty much everybody before getting Adam Lind (no doubt feeling fresh as a daisy coming off paternity leave) swinging to end the game with the bases loaded. 


But all of that ended up seeming minor, as it turned out to be Ozzie Guillen's last game as White Sox manager, which is, you know, pretty major. As has perhaps been noted elsewhere previously, Ozzie is a character. He will no doubt be loved forever in Chicago on the strength of the White Sox first World Series win in eighty-eight years, and loved everywhere for the amazing things he would say in the papers and on Twitter. All signs indicate that he is on his way to Miami (possibly in exchange for a pair of minor leaguers), which means even though he will still probably be somewhere being awesome, I will almost never think of him, because I almost never think of the Marlins (I see no point). So this looks a lot like goodbye, Ozzie: you are a good egg.


I also wanted to mention unartfully in closing that the attendance at last night's cold, rainy, nothing game between the Blue Jays and the White Sox drew a crowd of 21 320, while only 18 772 showed up at Tropicana Field last night to watch the Rays beat the Yankees to draw even with the Red Sox for the wild card with two days left in the season. I would suggest that this is because people in Chicago, unlike people in the Tampa Bay area, enjoy baseball and deserve a team. Maybe even two! As everyone who has ever gone to baseball games at all knows, the Yankees are the best road draw around -- this year, for instance, they're averaging crowds of 33 954 in away games -- and yet you can't even get 20 000 into the (admittedly wretched) Trop for a crucial game. "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark," a great man once said, "how are you gonna stop them?" And this is certainly true. All I am saying is this: pretty lame, Rays fans; pretty lame.


KS