Williams, Ozzie back on friendly terms

Will Ozzie Guillen ever manage, or possibly coach for, the White Sox again?

Most likely not, but you can never completely rule out anything on the South Side.

As far as a return to the game in general, Guillen does have one unlikely ally in his corner - Sox vice president Kenny Williams.

Guillen's messy managerial exit from the White Sox at the end of the 2011 season was primarily caused by his inability to work with Williams, the general manager at the time.

And with the two former teammates standing on opposing ends of Jerry Reinsdorf, one clearly had to go.

It was Guillen, who headed to Miami to manage the Marlins. He lasted just one stormy season before being fired.

Williams had a long chat with Guillen before Friday's home opener against the Twins. He believes Guillen should be back in the game with some major-league team.

"I feel like baseball is missing something," Williams said. "I think it misses personality and characters, and a guy who has had as much success as he has and has as much baseball knowledge as he has and has a desire to be in uniform should be in uniform somewhere. Hopefully, he gets another chance to show it."

I asked Williams if he's surprised that Guillen has not gotten another job, either as a big-league manager or coach.

"No … I'm not," he said. "One thing he has I think grown to appreciate, and he's said it directly multiple times, is he appreciates my honesty and continued honesty because he hasn't always gotten that elsewhere. That's nice on my part to hear.

"And I'm not going to change so I told him, 'Listen, a lot of what you're going through now was self-created. And in order to have that turned around, you're going to have to show people that there is that more mature, 51-year-old man who's ready to employ a different strategy.'"

As for their well-publicized battles, Williams said they're a thing of the past.

"We've been communicating for a while and trying to get together to have some dinner but it seems like our schedules conflicted all winter long," Williams said. "It (Friday) was the first chance we had to visit. As we've talked about, we were 18 years old, so it's a 30-year friendship and a lot of laughs and a lot of good times. We suffered through some bad times together and still managed to have some laughs along the way.

"We both got together and decided whatever transpired over the last couple of years really had less to do with he and I and more to do with some things on the peripheral that some were just, created. I won't say falsely, but certainly created with intentions. We've chosen to focus on all the years we had a great positive relationship and accomplished something very special than some of the other things."