Make no mistake, I love Ozzie Guillén.
He was so, so good to me on the beat. Him calling me out, with affection, at the winter meetings in front of some odd conglomerate of national/international/bullfighting beat media after I’d lost a ton of weight like two months into the offseason, is still an all-time favorite moment I have of covering the team.
He made the job so much fun. Terribly taxing, given you couldn’t miss a moment of his endless waxings on everything from opponents to bullfighting (bleah) to his lovely wife Ibis to former managers and teammates to his own club to his many gaffes to the million insider stories told off-mic.