Robin Ventura: Chicago White Sox Roll Dice by Overlooking Terry Francona

Robin Ventura was known throughout his playing days for slugging Grand Slams. The Chicago White Sox hope he'll hit a few more from the dugout as Ozzie Guillen's replacement as manager, especially after passing over Terry Francona for the position.

Ventura spent 10 seasons at third base with the South Siders before bouncing from the Mets to the Yankees and finishing his career in Los Angeles with the Dodgers. He worked with the organization this past season as a special advisor to Buddy Bell, the White Sox's director of player development.

Ventura's hiring comes as something of a shock, given that he has never managed at any level and, more importantly, that the Sox could have hired Francona, the former manager of the Boston Red Sox, who has two World Series championships on his resume. Tito left Beantown last week on the heels of Boston's historic, late-season collapse.

Francona would have been an excellent fit with the ChiSox, or so it would seem. He has long been close friends with team owner Jerry Reinsdorf and began his coaching career in the White Sox's system. Tito got his start as the team's hitting instructor in the early 1990s before delving into the minors, where he managed Michael Jordan in Double-A in 1994.

Of greater import, though, is Francona's experience in the job, with a regular-season record of 744-552 and 28 postseason victories to boot.

Clearly, Tito would have been the safe, if not preferable, choice to lead the Pale Hose out of the doldrums and into the future as a contender in the American League.

Then again, general manager Kenny Williams has never been one to play it safe or stick dogmatically to conventional wisdom. After all, it was Williams who hired Ozzie Guillen, another former White Sox player, back in 2004 to replace Jerry Manuel. At the time, Guillen was just four years removed from his playing career, with the intervening years spent as a coach with the Montreal Expos and the Florida Marlins, with whom he won the World Series in 2003.

That hire was highly questioned at the time, though it quickly paid dividends in 2005, when Guillen led the White Sox to their first World Series championship since 1917. Guillen's tenure was testy throughout, to say the least, filled with profanity-laced tirades and palpable tension between the coaches, the players and the front office.

Of course, Ventura is no Ozzie Guillen, who returned to Miami to manage the Marlins. He doesn't mouth off like Ozzie does, nor does Ventura come equipped with the sort of experience and jewelry that his former teammate has on his resume.

That being said, Ventura is no pushover, nor is he anywhere close to "dead on arrival." Though typically mild-mannered, Ventura can mix it up on occasion, as in 1993, when he charged the mound after getting hit by a pitch from Nolan Ryan and ended up in a headlock.

Okay, so maybe he's not the best fighter, but the guy knows baseball. As Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports points out:

Okay, again, maybe not the best example, seeing as how helping out his kid's high school baseball team is juuust a bit different from managing at the Big League level.

To his credit, Ventura has the sort of even-keeled temperament that the White Sox need after eight blustery seasons of Ozzie in the Windy City. Though Chicago has underperformed in recent seasons, the team still sports a pretty good stock of talent, good enough to contend in the AL Central in 2012.

Assuming, of course, that Ventura has a good enough handle on his newfound responsibilities.