A little more than a week ago, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Chris De Luca caught up with former White Sox P Brandon McCarthy, who expressed enthusiasm for what he thinks to be a happy, friendly environment at Rangers camp.
”It’s a very comfortable clubhouse,” McCarthy said. ”I love the guys in Chicago, but it was a somewhat older clubhouse. Most of the guys there are married and they have kids and it’s tough for guys like [Brian] Anderson and me to relate. We didn’t get to hang out with them as much. As much as I like those guys in Chicago, this is much more my age, my speed.”
Predictably, ChiSox skipper Ozzie Guillen flipped his lid when read McCarthy’s remarks on Mike North’s WSCR program on Friday. From the Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley.
‘I don’t want to talk about Mac because he made a couple of comments — I really hate him,” Guillen told North. ”I don’t like the comments he made about our clubhouse, about our players, about [us] negative people here. There’s one thing about Ozzie Guillen: Ozzie Guillen is never negative.”
‘Obviously he wasn’t in the position he liked to be,” Guillen said on the show. ”Well, we didn’t want him in the bullpen, but that was the only spot we had. If Brandon McCarthy thought he was better than the five guys I had, he’s wrong. The comment he made about the clubhouse that only two guys were single, everybody was married, nobody treated him the way he should … well, everyone in our clubhouse gets along. I think Brandon should look himself in the mirror.
”You played with us 162 games and all of a sudden you leave and say you don’t have a friend in the clubhouse? Only Brian Anderson? Well, he picked the wrong guy to be friends with. People forgot that Brandon McCarthy got caught a couple of times out at night. I called him into my office and said, ‘You been hanging around the city a lot, huh?’ I said, ‘I don’t have a spy on you, but I know a lot of people in the bars in Chicago. I’ve been here for 20 years, and they will tell me everything.”’
Guillen later added, ”He forgot he lost a couple of games for us. He lost at least five of the 72. We might be in the playoffs without him.”
In Port St. Lucie this afternoon, the Mets are leading the Dodgers, 2-1 in the middle of the 7th. David Newhan drove in Carlos Beltran with a 7th inning sac fly, the former’s 6th RBI in 4 games. Earlier, Jose Reyes hit a solo HR in the 6th, his 2nd longball of the spring. 2 innings pitched, 1 hit allowed for Mike Pelfrey, while Jason Vargas retired 6 Dodgers in a row after allowing a leadoff double in the 3rd. Over at Fort Myers, Boston and Philly are tied at 6 in the middle of the 8th. Both clubs are wearing red hats, with the Red Sox in red BP jerseys (Philly in blue and red). I’m at least 25 years away from moaning that I can’t tell who is who, but the risk of treading into Paul Lukas territory, they all look terrible.
The ads for MLB2K7 have been playing all afternoon on SNY, and while the soothing sounds of Nirvana’s “Breed” might not send me down to the nearest Electronics Boutique, I was kind of curious if Jerry Hairston Jr. could help me score some heroin on the internet.