Chicago White Sox Will Miss Ozzie Guillen's Best Attribute: Causing Distractions

An eight-year era came to a sudden end Monday night, as the Chicago White Sox and manager Ozzie Guillen parted ways.

Guillen, 47, was released from his contractual duties just before Monday night’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Guillen was officially traded from the White Sox to the Florida Marlins for two minor-league prospects, one of whom is reported to be infielder Osvaldo Martinez. The second is a player to be named later.

Shortly after this deal was made public, reports on a four-year extension between Guillen and the Marlins was also leaked. Guillen has accepted such terms.

“I want more money. I don’t want to be here for a year. No, I want more money,” Guillen said last evening. “I’m going to die with the White Sox poor? Hell no. Listen, this is my job. This is the only thing I can do. I’ve got to make money out of it somewhere.

“I know they’re not going to forget me. Even if they want to, they can’t. They’ll walk through the ballpark. My picture will to be up there. I hope they don’t take it down.” 

The departure of Guillen from the Pale Hoes brings a near decade-long marriage with his former team from his playing days to a bitter end. For two seasons now, GM Kenny Williams and Guillen have gone back and forth over the power struggle of the team, dating back to last spring when Williams forced Guillen to fire his son Onnie for public remarks made on Twitter regarding baseball operations. The tweets were unprofessional and damaging to the franchise and a separation was inevitable.

“I’m not going to say I left empty-handed, because I left there with my ideas, with what I want,” Guillen said following a meeting he had with team owner Jerry Reinsdorf Monday. “I left there (knowing) what I should do. Now I have a couple of days, we have two more days to decide here what’s going on. But nothing here was (resolved.)”

The best feature Guillen brought to the White Sox other than a 2005 World Series championship was his ability to distract the club when they struggled or faced public criticism.

For example, a May 2008 incident in Toronto featured an unnamed player leaving female blowup dolls holding bats in the locker room to try and get the offensively-lacking club to snap from an 0-6 road trip. While the media made it out to be embarrassing and humiliating, Guillen took the blame off his players by calling it a funny joke and running a explicative laden tyrant.

The blowup scandal fell to the back burner as Guillen stole headlines and absorbed the public criticism.

"I'm not going to say I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. I can't come up with the words, because as soon as I say that, that means I'm guilty of something. I'm not. I'm not guilty...We just had a plastic thing sitting on a table, and wow, we're bad people," he told the media.

When the going gets tough in 20102 for the White Sox, they won’t have Guillen to fall back on to be the public attention scapegoat. Missing such a key component in the court of public opinion will turn out to be crucial when the team embarks on a long losing streak and fingers begin to get pointed.

The White Sox wished Guillen the best of luck in his future endeavors down the road in a press release made public last evening.

It certainly appears that the Ozzie Guillen experiment reached its expiration date and it was just his time to go.

It will be very interesting to see who steps up as a fearless team leader without Guillen on the squad. Letting go of Guillen may seem like it was a smart PR move, but will prove to be costly if the White Sox ever hit a nasty speed bump.

Brett Lyons is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand or from official interview materials.

Follow Brett Lyons on Twitter @BrettLyons670.