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Ozzie's School of Management: Lessons from the Dugout, the Clubhouse, and the Doghouse [Hardcover]

Rick Morrissey
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Book Description

May 22, 2012

Going behind the scenes with Ozzie Guillen, baseball's most colorful and irrepressible manager, to reveal the hidden factors that create a winning team

When Ozzie Guillen opens his mouth, nobody knows what's going to come out. And that has made the manager of the Miami Marlins endlessly entertaining to legions of baseball fans. In language that is often as profane as it is colorful, he will lash out not only at his team's opponents but also at his own players, reporters, fans, and most of all, himself. He is always getting himself in hot water, and he loves every minute of it.

Yet for all the antics and controversy, Guillen is also one of the game's best managers—a World Series champion and a perennial contender. This book opens the door on the secrets to his success.

Ozzie's School of Management distills the ten commandments of managing, Guillen-style, which means no-holds-barred and leave your squeamishness at the door. The Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Morrissey, who built a strong rapport with Guillen during his eight years with the Chicago White Sox, takes us on a rollicking ride through Ozzie's world, shining a light on his sharp intellect, organizational insights, and changing moods, and showing that the most important part of managing occurs before the first pitch and after the last out.


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Ozzie's School of Management: Lessons from the Dugout, the Clubhouse, and the Doghouse + Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Morrissey captures [Guillen’s] thought process . . . [and] nails why the man is so good at his job."--The Wall Street Journal

"Morrissey writes with verve and much humor.… Through observing Guillen on and off the field and interviewing him, Morrissey presents a rewarding explication of how this individual operates. Fans… [will] enjoy this expert, fast-paced study."—Library Journal

"Ozzie Guillen’s management style is not exactly straight out of the Harvard Business School, but his singular approach is vastly more vibrant and compelling. There is a method to his madness, and thanks to Rick Morrissey for busting through the stereotypes and making sense of it all."—David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered and Clemente

"Rick Morrissey squarely puts you in the passenger seat of a baseball bus driven by Ozzie Guillen. I expected Ozzie would ignore the speed limit, flip off a cop, and run over a few mailboxes, but I didn’t expect to learn about his wisdom, patience, and sixth sense for the baseball family. I would love to pass on Guillen’s words to my young son, only problem is I have to wait until he is twenty-one."--Doug Glanville, former major-league center fielder and author of The Game from Where I Stand

"Ozzie Guillen is my kind of guy, what you see is what you get, take it or leave it. He is a winner."--Mike Ditka, former head coach of the Chicago Bears

About the Author

Rick Morrissey is an award-winning sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and he has previously worked at the Chicago Tribune, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Charlotte Observer. He has covered most of the major events in sports, from the Super Bowl to the Olympics to the NBA Finals. He lives in the Chicago area.


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Times Books; First edition (May 22, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0805095004
  • ISBN-13: 978-0805095005
  • Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,138,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

3.3 out of 5 stars
(6)
3.3 out of 5 stars
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Though I don't reside in Chicago, I believe that Chicago is one of the top 4-5 sports cities in America and even though the Chicago teams aren't my favorite... if my team doesn't win the World Series... the Super Bowl... the NBA championship... Stanley Cup... etc. I pull for Chicago and Boston. I've always had a special place in my heart for the street-fighting-straight-talking managers such as Billy Martin... and even further back Leo "The Lip" Durocher. But even from afar Ozzie's antics the last few years i.e. battling general manager Kenny Williams on everything under the sun... both business wise and personal... his public threats and whining about a contract extension with owner Jerry Reinsdorf as well as Williams... wound down to the equivalent of a broken scratched record... extremely irritating. The author's constant hashing and rehashing of the same exact thing over and over for two hundred pages... becomes... well... you know.

It probably isn't humanly possible to tell the reader more than they've been told here regarding... that he's a players manager... or that he always wants to take the blame for any losses or problems with player's performances. But somehow... you are told more. Probably the best line in the book is when the author describes Guillen as ** THE CHARLES BARKLEY OF BASEBALL **. The only subject that statistically is in the same "ballpark" as his loyalty to his players... is his protective nature to his family. But I believe when the reader makes note of some of the tweets and comments his sons make to the public about the White Sox... it's hard to side with Ozzie's blind... repetitive... loyalty. How about some "tough-love" with the family? And talk about loyalty... it becomes repetitively non-sensical all the many times in this book that Ozzie swears loyalty to the Sox while considering an offer from the Marlins while still under contract with the Sox.

It's made abundantly clear that Ozzie was probably vaccinated with a phonograph needle... as he yaks and yaks to anyone... and anything... and normally about the same few subjects... and so does the author. The following observation is for the benefit of potential readers that may have different moralities than I do because what I'm about to share doesn't bother me... but may bother others. There are probably more F's and MF's per page in this book than in any book I've read in the last five years. That's the way Ozzie and a lot of people talk (I'm one)... so no problem for me... but just a heads up. It's also very interesting/amusing that this book was written right before Ozzie's mind blowingly offensive comments about Fidel Castro got him suspended for a few games. (And Oz also has the Marlin's knocking on first place's door!)
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
One of the many reasons I love baseball is the characters you find associated with the game. Since a prime example of those characters is Ozzie Guillen, I was happy to win this book from LibraryThing. I thought it would be full of hilarious stories from his many years in the game, and since Morrissey is a Chicago area journalist, he should know the "real" Ozzie from Guillen's years with the White Sox.

The subtitle is "Lessons from the dugout, the clubhouse, and the doghouse." Even more reason to believe this would be funny. Now I wasn't born yesterday so I'm well aware that Ozzie's language is offensive, but I figured it would be easy to overlook. Well, this isn't the first time I've been totally wrong.

Ozzie cannot form even a partial sentence without saying F--- at least once, if not two or three times. Just for variety he often precedes this with "Mother" and he uses these words as nouns, verbs, adjectives and in every conceivable situation. And he's LOUD. It sounds like he's actually proud of his language, and yet he brags about how he learned English when he came here from Venezuela so he could fit in!

This book would have been excellent as a longish magazine article, but it just isn't right for a book. Morrissey tells the same things over and over so that as you get into the book you feel like you've read it before. And many of the stories just aren't that interesting, seemingly chosen more as examples of his foul language than for humor or insight.

I don't mean to completely demean either Ozzie or the book. Ozzie is a dedicated husband and father. He can be brilliant as a baseball manager, and there's a lot to be said for his way of communicating with his players. The cover shows him in full rage, right up in the face of an umpire, but that's his way of defending his players and showing them he's on their side. I think it would take a special person to get along with Ozzie but if a player can get along with him, he's got a friend for life.

When he's criticized for the way he spends money lavishly on his family, he tells people he works hard for his money and intends to enjoy it. He doesn't wish to save it up so his widow's boyfriend can have a good time with it. Now that's funny!
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3.0 out of 5 stars Obviously of Interest Mostly to Sox Fans September 27, 2012
Format:Hardcover
Ozzie's act got old, even to those who welcomed him here and are eternally grateful for the 2005 World Series he brought us. This book helps us remember why.

Well-written and briskly paced, it outlines Ozzie's shoot-from-the-hip style and how, initially, that was very refreshing but ultimately, when you're dealing with somebody who has no filter--it gets old. It's not hard to see how the team "tuned him out" in those last years, as I would too if you had to ride that roller coaster.

What you take away from this is, reading between the lines, is that for all Ozzie's talk about how he doesn't give a bleep about what people think and what he says... actually, he does. Which would explain a lot of his back-and-forth behavior during various episodes where at first he was defiant, then conciliatory--sometimes both at the same time. You get the impression of a man who does say what he thinks but ultimately will reconsider what he said if enough people disapprove (people whose opinion he values).

The "f" bomb is dropped so many times in quoting Ozzie in this book it makes a Scorcese mob movie seem like a Disney production.

The fun thing in here--and the thing to recommend the book probably to only Sox fans, who would presumably be the only ones interested in it--is the behind-the-scenes tales of what really happened with this player or that player (Cabrera, Swisher, Rios, Morel) and of course the GM, Kenny Williams. You certainly get a fuller picture here, finally.

Ultimately what many suspected happened is confirmed in this book--Ozzie and KW fought over who the owner would side with, with KW taking the low-key, "high road" approach and Ozzie taking a "this is me (and my family), love it or leave it" approach.

KW won.

I guess the real indicator of just how good Ozzie is as a manager is how he does in Miami. If they're still in the toilet after two or three seasons, it doesn't bode well for his "style."
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