But usually, Ozzie’s rants do strike home. Like when he went off at great and vulgar length about the alleged wonderfulness of the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony La Russa, and the National League Central. Or when he calls his players out for insipid play. He’s so brutal, they can’t even object — because he’s brutally right.

You can’t have everybody acting like Guillen and Piniella. It would be like having to watch SportsCenter 24 hours a day. It would make you want to puke.

But at the same time, you need somebody acting like them, if only for comic relief. They’re the guys who bring us back to earth after listening to all the people who want to make the game into a cold science. It’s not cold science to them. It’s a bleeping game that drives them bleeping nuts, and who the bleep are you bleeping bleeps to question why they didn’t bleeping bunt in the eighth bleeping inning?

There was a time when most managers used to strip down to their ragged game underwear after a game, chain smoke cigarettes, and either growl or trade jokes with reporters. Piniella is the last one of that breed. One of my favorite baseball memories is of Sweet Lou losing it after a Yankees loss. He was in the manager’s office in the old Yankee Stadium, stripped to his underwear. He looked at the writers wanting to know how his team screwed it up this time. He growled, fumed, and finally turned around and ripped a couple of bookshelves off the wall behind his desk.

“Is that what you bleeping wanted?” he yelled when he was done. “Did you all get that?”

Nobody said a word, but inside, I was thinking, “You betcha, Lou! Best post-game speech ever.”

I can guarantee you every reporter who is lucky enough to be present for one of Ozzie’s rants is thinking the same thing while also praying the batteries in the tape recorder don’t die.

Okay, so Lou doesn’t respect the rules of civilized behavior, and Ozzie ignores the rules of civil discourse. And, yes, that’s a terrible example for the youth of this country. But bleep it, we need people to show us the wrong way just as much as we need people to show us the right way. Mostly because the wrong way is so refreshingly funny.

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