Ozzie Guillen throws perfect temper tantrum

CHICAGO, IL—Players and clubhouse reporters could hardly have known Thursday afternoon when they filed into the White Sox locker room that they were about to witness baseball history. When asked by a reporter his opinion about division rival Minnesota Twins, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen launched into a litany of curses, insults, and defamatory statements without backtracking, pausing, or repeating any previous statements.

A perfect temper tantrum—defined as “a period of sustained verbal outrage in which the subject goes for a minimum of ten minutes without repeating a swearword or insult towards the object of derision”—is one of baseball’s rarest occurrences, and one of the few feats that can be captured by both players and managers. The last known perfect rage was in 1995, when “Sweet Lou” Pinella managed to berate an entire umpiring crew for fifteen minutes over a strikeout call.

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Guillen’s perfect rant, only the 15th in the history of major-league baseball, will no doubt be the crowning achievement of a career spent childishly complaining and embarrassing himself and the White=0 ASox organization.

“It’s always wonderful to watch something like this,” said longtime Chicago Tribune reporter Ken O’Steele. “Guillen has done so much for the sport (not baseball, temper tantrums) and to see his hard work pay off at last, well that’s really something special.”

“Lots of guys go their whole career and not see one of these,” reflected outfielder Jermaine Dye. “To be a part of history like this, to actually witness a perfect temper tantrum is something really humbling. I myself will be walking on eggshells around that douchebag for at least a week.”

Guillen’s most recent attempt at a perfect rant in 2006, directed at then-Sun-Times-columnist Jay Mariotti, fell short in the sixth minute, when Guillen repeated the word “cocksucker,” already used in the second minute.

“I felt pretty good, you know, letting it all out, and midway through the fifth minute I could still feel everyone’s anxiety, I could see in their eyes that my insults were still fresh, you know, and I say to myself, ‘Oz, you could have something going here.’

“I just want to thank all the fans, and especially the media for knowing how to push my buttons all these years,” Guillen concluded. “Not that I need an excuse to start bitching people out, but the media really kept my anger up, day in and day out.”

Guillen received a standing ovation from those present when he finished, as well as a congratulatory phone call from longtime Sox fan President Obama, telling Guillen that his “extraordinary achievement” will be remembered by legions of White Sox fans for generations to come.

Baseball analysts are already talking about how Guillen’s tirade ranks among the all-time greatest performances.

“This came up against a very tough press lineup,” said ESPN personality Peter Gammons. “There’s nothing these guys haven’t seen. To score a perfect outing against a Chicago press corps is impressive indeed. Maybe not as awe-inspiring as George Steinbrenner’s outburst over Reggie Jackson in ’77 or Ted Williams haranguing the city of Boston in ’40, but still very remarkable.”

Guillen’s magical day was almost derailed in the ninth minute when he decried the Twins’ fans as a “bunch of punk-bastards” a close resemblance to “punk-bitches”, already used to describe Twins players themselves. Guillen admitted later that he thought his chance at history was ruined midway through the secondary vowel-formation.

The career record for perfect rants is two, held by Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb and John McGraw, though Cobb’s were asterisked in 1968, as they were about women and blacks, respectively.