Following Friday’s 12-5 defeat at the hands of Toronto, the underachieving Miami Marlins have lost 5 in row, 14 of their last 16, and have drifted to 8 games behind the NL East leading Washington Nationals. Quoted by the Sporting News this morning, manager Ozzie Guillen (above, left) told reporters that his chargers were “making excuses”, and proceeded to weigh in with a lengthy tirade about…uh, sports psychology. (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)
“Great players don’t need a psychiatrist,” Guillen said. “I didn’t see Pete Rose talking with any psychiatrist, Paul Molitor or all those guys. They talked with nobody. The (bad) players are the ones that need the psychiatrist next to them. Last five years, you see a lot of this in baseball. When players fail, they need a doctor. When managers and coaches fail, they get rid of (them).”
Guillen, who played 16 seasons in the majors from 1985 to 2000, believes players have to help themselves. “I was from an era in baseball when Budweiser and vodka took care of the psychiatric things,”
Guillen said. “You fail, you get drunk and you come back the next day to see how good it feels. The psycho guys—the doctors—they never played this game. They never wore the uniform. They never came out of a slump. They’re not used to it, so how are they going to help?“