Amidst reports of Logan Morrison providing the sort of “veteran leadership” departed skipper Edwin Rodriguez said was sorely lacking in the Florida clubhouse, the Marlins snapped an 11 game skid with Tuesday’s 5-3 defeat of Tampa. It will probably take a few more results of that nature to quell speculation Florida owner Jeffrey Loria has his eye on White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, and the Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley argues the shy, retiring Ozzie “has some chips on his side of the table.”
“I love the city, my two oldest kids are here, we have more friends here than we do in Miami, but that’s the only reason we [bought the house here],’’ Guillen said. “Moving to Chicago gives me more time to stay in Venezuela because when we lived in Miami, we stayed in Miami. We didn’t even go home.
“I didn’t buy a house here because I thought I would manage for the rest of my life.’’
Guillen was asked about loyalty and sounded like a guy who was recently given bad news by his boss.
“F— loyalty,’’ Guillen said. “Like Juan Uribe says, ‘Twenty-one million is more than $20 million.’?’’
Told he has a new bargaining chip with the Marlins job open again, Guillen said, “Yeah, but I don’t care. You know what’s funny? I don’t want to take advantage of that because I never have. That’s why I’m putting it on them. If they think I’m the guy here, the guy they want, then they will do something about it. If not, well, we’ll just leave it like that.’’
Memo to the chairman: You might want to get the checkbook out today because you’re one bad decision away from watching your baseball team go from “SoxTown’’ to slipping back to irrelevancy.