Williams' plate doesn't need extra helping from Guillen

Ozzie Guillen must go home at night and laugh.

He has become so good at distracting everyone from what they ought to be concerned about, that even when the manager's talking about it, everyone else is not.

For example, this week's hysteria is really about the White Sox' inability to hit, but who's interested in that when Guillen opened so many other doors in a matter of just a couple of paragraphs?

As he did in Toronto in early May, Guillen has gone off on a tangent, and rather than have you ponder the offensive smell coming from the Sox' lineup, Guillen has you wondering if he's in trouble.

He's not.

If Guillen is ever fired by GM Kenny Williams, it'll be when Williams believes Guillen is no longer the right man for the job.

Of that I am certain.

It will not be due to something Guillen says, as Guillen has said somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 things worse in the last five years, and rarely does Williams even bat an eye.

In this case, Williams might not be pleased with how it first sounded, or how it appeared, but what Guillen said was nothing terrible about the GM.

He said if the GM doesn't make lineup changes, Guillen will do it himself.

It's the manager's job to do exactly that with what he's given. He must shake things up and hope for a better result, though that rarely turns a .200 hitter into a .300 hitter.

But as Williams told me two weeks ago, "I don't believe there'll be better options out there. There may be surprises, and you never know when something's going to develop along the way.''

In other words, if he could make a deal for someone who would help the team offensively, he would have already done it.

He can see the pitching has been great, and it's killing Williams that the Sox lose games because they can't score, but until he can find something better for the right price, what you see is what you get.

One sure way to drive up the price for anyone you covet is by announcing you need to make a change.

That's the only genuine negative in what Guillen said, though it already was painfully obvious to the rest of baseball that the Sox lack an offense.

What hasn't changed is Guillen has complete and total respect for Williams, and vice versa. The two men like each other, work well together, support each other, and won a World Series together.

Williams responded to an e-mail Monday after having some time to reflect, and he sounded like he wanted to be done with it, writing, "Spoke yesterday (to Ozzie) for (a) quick minute. It's up to him to comment on his intent, not me.''

Sounds like he's letting Guillen handle this one on his own, and Guillen's almost certain to say today, after the two men meet on the South Side, that he didn't mean to make it sound like it was the GM's fault.

And that he wasn't intending to put more pressure on Williams to make a deal.

If Guillen handles it correctly, this chapter will close and another will open with Guillen's next rant, whenever he chooses to distract us all again.

It's worth remembering a conversation I had with Williams one year ago, when he admitted after the usual Guillen shenanigans that the manager might get himself fired one day, saying, "How can you not fear that? But I fear that as his friend more than I do as the guy who sits in the chair directly above him.''

And, of course, the June before that, in 2006, Williams had to deal with a Guillen transgression that never would have materialized had a single reporter realized what all others knew, that Guillen believed the conversation to be with microphones and pens stowed.

Nevertheless, Williams was aggravated and driving through Alabama and Georgia when that one occurred, saying by cell phone, "Ozzie has to keep this stuff off my desk. My desk is already full.''

So here we are in yet another June, waiting for Ozzie to croon.

And not a word of it matters until the day Williams believes Guillen isn't the best manager available for his club.

But Williams would sure appreciate it in the meantime, especially a couple of days before the draft, if Guillen would keep this stuff off his desk.

brozner@dailyherald.com