After being non-tendered by the White Sox and signing with the Red Sox as a free agent Bobby Jenks commented that he’s “looking forward to playing for a manager who knows how to run a bullpen.”
Ozzie Guillen remained remarkable silent after that, instead letting his son Oney Guillen rip Jenks repeatedly via Twitter, but Jenks has continued to criticize his former team and Guillen is no longer staying quiet.
Over the weekend Guillen fired back at Jenks in a huge way, airing some dirty laundry about the reliever’s time with the White Sox and threatening to make public significantly more stuff that “will be pretty ugly” unless Jenks keeps his mouth shut:If Oney said everything he knows about Bobby Jenks, it wouldn’t be a pretty thing. I respect his wife. I respect his kids. I’m not even mad. I wish I was mad about it because I will rip his throat [out]. That’s sad because it’s coming from him. That surprises me. Everybody in this organization did a lot of great things for him. Did he pitch good for us? Yes, very, very good. But in the meanwhile, just worry about setting up some games over there. Just worry about Boston, don’t worry about the White Sox.
He did a lot of bad things last year. We lied for him, we protected him. I’m the first manager in the history of baseball to give a guy a week off to take care of his kids when his father-in-law was sick. It wasn’t even his wife, it even wasn’t a [family] member. But it was out of respect I have for his family. I sent him home because he had to babysit his kids because his father-in-law was sick. I don’t think any manager is doing that. But coming from him, I expect that.
We don’t miss him. You ask 30 guys in there. By the way, I was asking for his phone number to talk him to about it, and nobody had his phone number. None of his [former] teammates had his phone number. That you can tell what happened. ... Just be careful of what you say about Oney because Oney will say stuff he’s not supposed to be saying. That’s just a warning for him just in case somebody don’t call him. Just stay away and don’t name Oney for this because it will be pretty ugly.
And as Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune chronicled, there was a lot more where that came from.
Jenks’ new manager, Terry Francona, is trying to squash the feud before it escalates any further, saying “that’s over” and telling Michael Vera of the Boston Globe that he reached out to Guillen and White Sox coach Joey Cora in an effort to shut it down. That may keep things quiet for a while, but given what are obviously some pretty negative feelings from both sides and Guillen’s complete lack of an internal censor there’s absolutely no way we’ve heard the end of this stuff.
