Ozzie Guillen's Broadcast Career Over?

Ozzie Guillen wants to come back to the World Series -- as a manager

By EAMONN BRENNAN

Updated 8:24 AM CST, Fri, Nov 6, 2009

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Oh, Ozzie. We hardly knew ye.

When the Yankees won Game 6 and ended the World Series, White Sox manager Guillen's temporary career as a baseball broadcaster ended, too. What did we learn? Unfortunately, beyond the fact that Guillen isn't nearly as interesting as we thought he'd be, not a whole lot.

Then again, perhaps our expectations were too high. Of course Guillen wasn't going to flip out on Fox's World Series broadcast. Of course he wasn't going to drop a profanity-laced tirade about a blowup doll. He's too smart for that. So instead the Ozzie we got was flaccid, friendly, borderline bubbly, and who had very little to say about baseball at all.

That's OK, actually. Guillen's major talent isn't in communicating facts about baseball, it's in managing with an intuitive sense of his players' needs. For all of Guillen's minor managerial flaws, it's his actions, not his words, where he demonstrates his baseball intelligence. Crazy Ozzie on the mic is always fun, but it's not where Ozzie butters his bread.

Then again, Guillen was able to clearly communicate one thing last night: Just before the World Series broadcast ended, Guillen thanked his cohorts for having him along and said that next year, he "expected to be back." After a brief pause, he made it clear that he meant as a manager, and not a broadcaster. That sounds OK to us.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. He is the editor of Yahoo! Sports's college basketball blog The Dagger and a contributor to Inside The Hall. Follow him at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com, or on Twitter.