O’Donnell: Ozzie Guillen and Jimmy Piersall — just one critical difference
NEWS THAT THE WHITE SOX WILL RETIRE Ozzie Guillen's No. 13 later this summer brought toasts from some, informed chuckles from others.
As an imaging distraction by a MLB franchise best known for massive losing seasons in recent years, it's timely spring bunting.
As a career valedictory for a firebrand who managed the only championship team without Michael Jordan in Jerry Reinsdorf's 85 seasons of White Sox-Bulls oversight (1981-now & 1985-now), it's fine.
GUILLEN PLAYED THE GAME glove-to-wall. He also was once known for tightrope-wiggling honesty, whether it was praising Fidel Castro or calling a pesty downtown sports columnist by a homophobic slur.
In more recent years, he has been, without question, the most electric studio analyst in the uneven talent vertical at Chicago Sports Network (CHSN). That's the option-Why? cable home of the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks.
SOMETIMES, GUILLEN AND HIS BASEBALL OPINIONS even touch the echoes of Jimmy Piersall.
That's high praise, because Piersall was the most insightfully direct analyst in the history of Chicago sports broadcasting.
Even his best friends might say Piersall was far too direct. He voiced honesty over tact. He regularly walked radio-TV planks in Our Town like a pirate with 19 lives.
THAT'S WHERE GUILLEN now dances, on an infield that Piersall never could.
However punchy his diamond observations on CHSN may seem, Guillen never attacks the ultimate source of the White Sox' malaise and that's Reinsdorf thoroughly fallible baseball instincts.
Guillen — likely tempered by age, material comforts and the concerns of being a devoted grandfather — has survived on air through three consecutive 100-loss seasons.
Piersall wouldn't have lasted through one.
HIS FINISHING SCHOOL in Major League Baseball was at the Fenway Park spikes of greats like Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio.
Those doctoral studies were still extant even after the Reinsdorf partnership took control of the White Sox in the winter of 1980-81.
THAT'S ALSO WHY PIERSALL, in short sequence, bounced to the end of five seasons alongside Harry Caray in the South Side TV booth (in 1981) to SportsVision/WMAQ-AM (670) studio analyst (1982-83) to independent nightly sports talker on the old WIND-AM (560) before the station went Spanish language in 1985.
The broadcast plank always called ol' No. 37, and he habitually walked on down.
He died at age 87 in West suburban Wheaton in 2017.
IN AN ERA of annoying antiseptics and pockets of outright ineptitude in the 2026 broadcast schemes of both the Cubs and the White Sox, the organicness of Jimmy Piersall almost seems surreal.
The corporate guardrails of today wouldn't risk allowing his on-air candor.
And the suspicion is that they couldn't restrain a truly untethered Ozzie Guillen either.
INSTEAD, GAME AFTER GAME, the proud Venezuelan-American plays with as much analytical topspin as his TV survival instincts will allow.
So he retains a nicely paying gig.
And now Jerry Reinsdorf's White Sox are going to retire his No. 13 — with toasts and chuckles all around.
STREET-BEATIN':
The Athletic referred to Michigan's title-clinching 69-63 win over UConn Monday night as “the first six-point 'blowout' in championship game history.” The whole truth is that the really “blown out” were any speculators who had Dusty May and the Wolverine men at the closing minus-6½. (Blue-and-maize ouch). …
The delayed '26 debut of Seiya Suzuki with the slow-starting Cubs Friday underscored the sheer gratuitousness of prime-time players participating in the World Baseball Classic. Wrigley rabid are much more interested in growing N.L. pennants rather than “growing the game internationally” via thoroughly synthetic springtime swill. …
A dusting of reality for all intrigued by the idea of the state of Indiana creating a Meadowlands-style complex around a Bears stadium near Hammond: A horse-race track on the grounds would need a casino to make it work and there are already four temples of chance from the northwest state line to Michigan City. (Plus two more supporting horse tracks closer to Indianapolis.) …
The idea of Billy Donovan returning to college coaching produced a whole lot of guffaws around the NBA. With the Bulls, the Hall of Famer has great direct deposits, no recruiting, comfy travel and no wealthy alumni base on his derriere. Not to mention fawning ownership, although even Donovan will never overcome “The Curse of the Breakup” as long as the Reinsdorfs are calling the shots. …
Worst injury of the DePaul basketball season came last weekend when all-time great Joe Ponsetto slipped and broke a hip while attending the Women's Final Four in Phoenix. “The Godfather” says all is full strides ahead. …
And Gotham snark Phil Mushnick, sure to ruffle that testy Brad Underwood fringe: “How is it that UConn's Final Four win has been listed as a defeat of Illinois when UConn beat a team of recently arrived Serbo-Croatian All-Stars plus one from Greece?”
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.