What Ozzie Meant
Over the years sportswriters have complained to me–perhaps out of jealousy, though I’ve never thought so–that Mariotti takes shots but doesn’t show up in clubhouses. Last Friday the Tribune’s Rick Morrissey went public with that indictment. He noted, in Tribspeak, that Guillen had called Mariotti a “derogatory term for a homosexual.” Morrissey wrote, “Inexcusable and indefensible,” then added context. “Guillen considers Mariotti a coward for not backing up his often-angry columns with even an occasional appearance in the Sox’s clubhouse. Mariotti doesn’t believe it’s his duty as a columnist to meet and greet the people he has ripped. . . . I do know one thing: If you’re a sports columnist, you show up in the clubhouse to face the music. It’s a matter of fairness.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
There’s never been any love lost between Mariotti and his Sun-Times rival, Rick Telander, who last Monday wrote roughly the same thing: “What Guillen kept bringing up was his old-school feeling that something is wrong with the world when a writer–to wit: Mariotti–can write at times personally hurtful commentary about Ozzie and his team without ever being physically present in front of them.” Telander helpfully reminded readers that Mariotti’s column has called Guillen the “Blizzard of Oz,” departed slugger Frank Thomas the “Big Skirt.”
Ultimately Mariotti blames Reinsdorf for everything, including “Ozzie Guillen butt-naked standing behind me in the clubhouse doing a hip salute” and Thomas “telling me he’s going to stick the bat up my ass sideways.”
Good News About the First Amendment
News Bites
aThere’s no building along the north side of Illinois Street opposite the Reader building, but that doesn’t make this space a “long vacant site,” which is what the Sun-Times’s David Roeder called it in a June 21 column. A park occupies the site: trees, flowers, fountains, benches, and occasionally bands that play noon concerts. A shorter copy of the AMA tower that shares the block was supposed to be built there, and to the relief of lots of people, it wasn’t. But according to Roeder, developer John Buck now hopes to put up a hotel. Roeder hinted at the charm of this space later in his column when he called it a “popular outdoor respite for River North office workers.” As he might have noted, it’s a respite from the cheap beige shoe boxes Buck has thrown up around it, turning River North into the city’s most conspicuous wasted planning opportunity.
