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Add Ozzie Guillen to the growing list of people who feel personally and professionally betrayed in the wake of Mark McGwire's (or Mark McGuire, as Hall of Famer Peter Gammons calls him) admission that he used performance enhancing drugs:
Ozzie Guillen said he feels betrayed by Mark McGwire's admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs, and the Chicago White Sox manager isn't buying the slugger's contention that they didn't help him hit home runs at a record pace.
"That bothered me," Guillen told ESPNChicago.com columnist Melissa Isaacson on Thursday. "First of all, we competed against [McGwire's Oakland teams] in the '90s, and when I saw that, I was like, wow, I could have been in more playoffs, maybe I'd have had the chance to be in the World Series because we had a pretty good ballclub.
Let's take a look at the years in which Guillen's White Sox competed with McGwire's Athletics in the old American League West: During those eight years of overlap, the Athletics won four division titles, while the White Sox won one and finished second twice.
Might Guillen be on to something here? Perhaps, but here's how the Sox finished in the years that Oakland won the division:
(click "read more" for full article)
1988 - A's first, White Sox fifth
1989 - A's first, White Sox seventh
1990 - A's first, White Sox second
1992 - A's first, White Sox third
There was just one year in which the Sox finished second to the A's in the divisional race (there was no wild card at the time) - and Chicago finished nine games back of Oakland in 1990. Two years later, the Sox finished third and 10 games back.
Could steroid use among Oakland players have given them a nine- and 10-game advantage over Guillen and the White Sox (all of whom were presumably pristine and steroid free)? Perhaps, but we're not buying it.
Guillen goes on, as he often does:
"When people say, 'I don't know what happened,' we're lying to ourselves. I didn't see anyone doing it, but I know something happened. I saw these people growing bigger. The only time I felt betrayed is when Mark said, 'I did it, then Jose did it,' and we competed against them. Besides that, I don't even care. But I think Jerry Reinsdorf should have more division championship [banners] hanging around this ballpark than we have because we competed against them pretty good, and when you see the two best hitters they have that were on the juice, you feel betrayed."
Guillen certainly has a narrow sense of betrayal. He doesn't mention that he was teammates with Jose Canseco and Jose Guillen (named in the Mitchell Report) in Tampa in 2000. Nor does he mention playing with Rafael Palmiero and Brady Anderson (conjecture) in Baltimore in 1998. Nor does he mention managing Scott Schoenweis (also in the Mitchell Report) with the White Sox in 2004.
In the end, I'm not sure we need to add Guillen to the list of players McGwire needs to apologize to just yet.
(h/t: Mercurial Outfielder)
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