Guillen unleashed his verbal wrath before the White Sox faced the Blue Jays in Toronto, after having been asked a humorous question about a minor leaguer's recent performance and his chance at cracking the White Sox lineup.
That apparently was all it took. Guillen's profanity-laden stream of consciousness touched on Cubs fans, White Sox fans, the media, Lee Elia, and himself.
"Right now everyone in Chicago is making lineups -- 'Call up this guy, call up that guy.' ... If we had 50 people allowed on the roster, we could do that. That's what ticks me off about Chicago fans and Chicago media: They forget pretty quickly. A couple of days ago we were the [bleeping] best [stuff] in town. Now we're [bleep]," Guillen said to the aforementioned Chicago media before the game.
Guillen observed that Chicago still loved the Cubs, even though they have not won a World Series since 1908,
but the White Sox -- winners of the 2005 World Series -- did not receive the same affectionate support.
"We won it a couple years ago, and we're horse[bleep]," Guillen said, according to the Chicago Tribune. "The Cubs haven't won in [100] years, and they're the [bleeping] best. [Bleep] it, we're good. [Bleep] everybody. We're horse[bleep], and we're going to be horse[bleep] the rest of our lives, no matter how many World Series we win.
"We are the [bleep] of Chicago. We're the Chicago [bleep]. We have the worst owner [Jerry Reinsdorf]. The guy's got seven [bleeping] rings, and he's the [bleeping] horse[bleep] owner."
Guillen brought up Elia, the former Cubs manager who blew his gasket over what he considered to be ungrateful, unforgiving and unsupportive Cubs fans in an infamous tirade that recently marked its 25th anniversary.
"How about the Cubs celebrating that Lee Elia bull[bleep]? How many times do I curse people out? I will make a lot of money with my [stuff]. I have to keep going because in the future Ozzie will need money, and I can say, 'Here, give me money, here's the 10-year anniversary of my time I called [Jay] Mariotti stuff and the time I went on the radio and cursed out Mike North,'" Guillen said.
The North incident Guillen referred to is from mid-May 2007, when Guillen called in to North's Chicago radio show and the two got into a spat (with Guillen providing most of the profanity). And in June 2006, Guillen lashed out at Mariotti -- a columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times and frequent contributor to ESPN's "Around the Horn" -- and referred to Mariotti using a homophobic slur.
Guillen did turn around and change the batting order before Monday night's game but the results were the same. The White Sox fell 1-0 for a four-game sweep.
Guillen batted Orlando Cabrera leadoff for the White Sox's game against the Blue Jays. He also moved
Carlos Quentin up to second and dropped Nick Swisher to sixth in the order.
On Sunday, the White Sox arranged all their bats in front of a pair of blowup dolls on a clubhouse couch in an attempt to shake the team out of its funk. It didn't work as Chicago lost its season-high fifth straight, scoring just nine runs in that span. The White Sox are batting 7-for-55 (.127) with runners in scoring position over the past eight games and an AL-worst .232 for the season.
Some Chicago fans questioned the appropriateness of having blowup dolls in the clubhouse, but Guillen had no problems with the gag.
"I'm not going to make the players apologize," he said. "I don't think that was a big deal. It's our house. I don't think we did anything wrong and I don't think we did anything to make people upset. We did something to have fun and stay loose. Those dolls don't work. .... Hopefully we come up with something better. We don't need dolls, we need hits."
Guillen believes the pressure to shake off the slump is getting to some of his hitters, causing them to swing at pitches out of the strike zone.
"They're not getting us out, we get ourselves out," Guillen said. "At the beginning of the season we took a lot of pitches and got a lot of people on base. Now, I won't say we're panicking, but we're a little anxious to carry the load.
"You can't push the panic button," he added. "We've just got to swing at better pitches. I think we're fine if we start swinging at strikes."
The White Sox had been in first place in their division from April 15 until Saturday night, but are on a five-game losing streak and now 1½ games behind the Minnesota Twins.
"People are panicking," Guillen said. "Did we play a real bad week? Yes, we did, we stunk. But it wasn't too long ago that we were 'the biggest surprise in baseball, wow, look at the White Sox.'"
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
