Only Guillen can determine if he will be right man again
Christmas came early for Ozzie Guillen, which comes as no surprise if you understand Jerry Reinsdorf.
The White Sox owner is the most loyal man in sports, and so the more the fans and media called for the manager to get whacked, the more likely Guillen was to get a contract extension.
I'm probably in the minority in that I like Guillen. He was the right man when GM Ken Williams hired him and he won a World Series, but Guillen's penchant for going off the deep end has worn out his team and become a far too common distraction.
The players won't admit publicly that they've grown weary of answering questions about the manager, when it's supposed to work the opposite way, but the fact remains that they packed it in awfully early this year.
Who quit on whom first is for the chicken and the egg to argue, but as for whether Guillen can once again be the right man for the White Sox, that's entirely up to Guillen.
They say you can't fire 25 players, but now that the manager's here at least five more years, perhaps he can fire a little less often and learn to keep his foot off his team's throat.
Or the Sox might have to back up one very large truck on 35th Street -- every October.
What'd you expect?
Seriously, it's a bit of an overreaction to mock the Bears because last place is the last place you expected them to be after one week of sterling NFL football.
Not that it's not mildly amusing to some who have grown tired of the arrogance originating from the Lake Forest pulpit, but it's a hair of a stretch to say the season's cashed.
The Bears, an average team, played the Chargers, a good team. See where we're going here?
The Bears didn't play a good team all of 2006 except for the Patriots, to whom they lost in New England. The next good team they played was Indianapolis in the Super Bowl.
This year's schedule doesn't look much different from last year -- and the Bears don't, either.
The defense looks dominant, and the Bears are likely to do to Kansas City what they did to all the doormats on the '06 docket.
They'll steamroll the Chiefs -- who managed to score as many points (3) as the Bears on Sunday -- and the psychos will be back beating a path to Rex Grossman's Hall of Fame door, while the assassins go quiet for a week.
Of course, there is an in between, if you stay current with the Diazepam.
The Bears remain a 9-7 team in a 13-3 conference, just as they were last season, and as long as coach Lovie Smith is willing to pull the plug on Grossman at some point -- assuming it becomes necessary -- the Bears should be sitting pretty come January.
Yes, the offensive line can play better, but it's pretty easy to rip the old guys up front for a lack of running game when the opposing defense has no respect for the pass.
But that's today, and by Sunday night, all things Bears will be bright and cheery and filled with talk of games to be played next February in Arizona and Hawaii.
You gotta love this league.
The bad news
Every year, Mike Brown tops the list as the player the Bears can least afford to lose.
He's their best defensive player and their smartest. He's got a nose for the ball that you can't teach, and he hits like Doug Plank. He stops the run and defends the pass.
He's the intellectual and emotional leader of the defense, but now he's gone again. Lovie Smith says injuries are part of the game and you have to move on. He wasn't being callous. He looked like he wanted to cry, as did many of Brown's teammates.
But the Bears must move on. They did last year and reached the Super Bowl without Mike Brown.
It will be tougher this year.
The tragic
When you hear of an NFL player in danger of never walking again after an on-field injury, don't you wonder how it doesn't happen more often?
The good walk
Former Giants defensive end George Martin, now 54, is taking "A Journey for 9/11,'' a walk beginning Sunday from New York's George Washington Bridge that will end at the Golden Gate four months later.
It's Martin's effort to raise $10 million toward health care for ground zero workers now suffering from health problems.
The good cause
The Lincolnshire-based Children's Heart Foundation will hold its eighth annual golf outing Monday at Conway Farms in Lake Forest and features an appearance by National Spokesperson, MacKinzie "Mac'' Kline, the 15-year-old phenom from San Diego. For more information, visit childrensheartfoundation.org.
Black and blue
Steve Stricker's parents were taking a beating from Bears fans in the pro shop at Cog Hill early Sunday morning, all in fun, of course, when his dad fired back.
"Just because we're from Wisconsin doesn't mean we're Packers fans,'' he said. "We're Bears fans!''
Spotted
On the rope line on the 16th fairway Sunday was the ubiquitous Dave Otto, along with his dad, legendary Rolling Meadows baseball coach Al Otto, who has been a White Sox scout the last 17 years.
Whatever happened to …
… Devin Hester?
And finally …
Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel, on Notre Dame's struggles: "Word is that (Charlie) Weis' offense was so bad last week that Touchdown Jesus is considering changing his name to Three-and-Out Jesus."
brozner@dailyherald.com