Charles Rex Arbogast / AP file

Jermaine Dye, last year's World Series MVP, takes batting practice during spring training in Tucson, Ariz.

First came Guillen’s comments to Sports Illustrated about Alex Rodriguez being a "hypocrite" over his waffling for whether he would play for the U.S. or the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, accusing him of having no real intention of playing for the Dominican team.

Guillen later apologized for his remark. However, he said he was just joking when he questioned Nomar Garciaparra’s qualifications to be on the Mexican team.

"Garciaparra only knows Cancun when he went to visit," Guillen told SI.

Williams, however, is making no apologies for his fusillade at recently dumped, aging superstar Frank Thomas, who told the Daily Southtown, a suburban Chicago newspaper, in an interview published Sunday that he wasn’t thrilled with how the team handled his departure. And he said he would have stayed away from postseason events, including throwing out the World Series’ first pitch and visiting the White House, had he only known (as everyone else in the free world had long figured out) that the Sox were going to bid him farewell.

Williams decided to be aggressive in his response, calling Thomas an "idiot," "selfish" and angrily maintaining the Sox covered his, ahem, posterior many times (including loaning him money) during his 16-year career.

"He better stay out of our business. He better stay out of White Sox business," Williams huffed.

So if being aggressive is a sign, then management is very, very hungry.

Following their lead, players are continually saying, yes, they’re hungry, too.

"Personally, I’m just as hungry to do it again," catcher A.J. Pierzynski told reporters in Tucson.

Maybe one arbiter of whether the White Sox are sufficiently hungry should be President Bush. During the White Sox’s White House visit, Bush, explaining why Chicago was able to break its 88-year titleless streak, quoted World Series MVP Jermaine Dye’s 2005 preseason comment that "from the start of spring training, everybody was hungry.

"He didn’t say one player was hungry or a guy going into arbitration was hungry. … He said everybody was hungry."

During the ceremony, pitching coach Don Cooper looked into the eyes of his pitchers.

"A lot of those guys were (in Washington) to meet the president, and all I had to do was take a look around,'' Cooper told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I looked into the eyes of Mark Buehrle, looked into the eyes of Jon Garland.

"I remember thinking, 'You know what? We've got the belt. We're the champs. Now we're defending that belt.' Looking into their eyes, I think we're going to be real son-of-a-(bleep) and not let anyone take it from us.''

I guess he means they’re hungry.

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