Mike Celizic

There are a couple of ways you can look at Ozzie Guillen, whose popularity and Q rating have shot up exponentially during the playoffs and World Series. One is to say that it’s a shame there aren’t more people like him managing major league teams. The other is to thank the powers that be that there’s just one of him.

You’d be right on both counts. The voluble Guillen, who was born without a filter between his emotions and his vocal chords, is endlessly entertaining. One of him is a breath of air as fresh as the one that followed Mark Fidrych when he blew into Detroit in 1976.

But to expect or even want everybody to act that way risks turning something refreshing into something trite and annoying. What makes Guillen so appealing is that he is unique. There have been no end of managers who yell. There have been plenty who will criticize their players in public. And there are also those who clearly enjoy their jobs. They all want to win. But there is only one who puts it all together and manages to do it without ticking off half the planet — Guillen.

He had said during the season that if he won the World Series, which he said was his goal, he’d think about quitting. Subsequent comments have indicated he wasn’t serious about that, which is good news for White Sox fans and columnists.

It might not prove to be good news for him. I hope it doesn’t turn out that way, but Guillen is popular and viewed with a kind eye because he won. Had the White Sox been eradicated by Houston, the critical lens would have been turned on every move Guillen made, and the moves that weren’t by the book would have been thrown back at him. Had the White Sox lost, some would have criticized him for being too emotional as well.

But they won, so everything he did is wonderful, including refusing to be ruled by pitch counts and letting his starters pitch four straight complete games in the ALCS, something that probably no other manager in baseball would dare to do.

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They and he won’t be so lucky every year. In the grand scheme of things, managerial moves work about as often as they fail. Sending Geoff Blum up to pinch hit in extra innings of Game 3 was a matter of Guillen changing his mind on the spur of the moment; his initial intent was to hit Pablo Ozuna in that spot. If Blum had struck out and Guillen run out of pitchers because he made nine changes in that game, leading to a Houston win, he’s not a genius anymore.

So the real test of the real Ozzie will begin next season, when the White Sox are hardly assured of winning again. He’s capable of acrimony when things aren’t going well, and we already know that he doesn’t care what he says. In the final month of the season, when he called his players out, they didn’t hold it against them because they won. And he did his part by not trying to claim the spotlight or the credit during their celebrations, saying repeatedly that the players won the title, not he.

He also says that losses are the manager’s fault. But last year, there was that statement about the players not doing their jobs. It’s inevitable that every team will go into a slump, and no team wins every year. And we simply don’t know how Guillen will react when those times come.

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Joe Torre and Bobby Cox have lasted as long as they have in large part because they don’t get overly excited. Their strength is their understanding that the baseball season is a long and grueling marathon and that a team can’t play on emotion for 162 games.

Excitable managers don’t tend to last a decade or more in a job. Lou Piniella has just left his fourth team. Critical managers don’t either. Jack McKeon went from hero to hated in no time at all, and Larry Bowa’s players flat-out quit on him.

Guillen put it all together this year. His unchecked flow of honest emotion stood him and his team in good stead. He proved to be a tactically shrewd manager and a players’ manager.

No matter what else happens to him and the White Sox, their moment in the sun can never be dimmed. But however great a year it was, it was just that, a year. Next year is another.

It will be most interesting to see how 2006 works out for Ozzie Guillen.

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