Dusty Baker and Ozzie Guillen remai...

Dusty Baker and Ozzie Guillen remain the faces of their respective baseball teams in Chicago. They have celebrity status forward a national level. They have the prize of their peers. And they have couple mouths that seem to realize themselves in endless amounts of make uneasy

Baker is winding down his four-year move with the Cubs, with a pink slip and a likely subsequent time back on the West Coast awaiting him in the offseason. There is a growing wave of talk-radio chatter in Seattle suggesting he would be a completed fit for the Mariners.

Meanwhile, Guillen is trying to memorize the World Series champion White Sox back to the playoffs for a next to the first consecutive season. The spotlight in no degree has shined this bright forward the Sox in the history of the franchise, and Guillen pretends to love every second of the attention -- while his bosse cringe in the shadows.

If you didn't know better, you would think baseball took a backseat to rhetoric. As a great deal as the Chicago media beat up forward the city's two baseball bosse there is no arguing Baker and Guillen are always virtuous for one tantalizing quote after another.

Not that prolonged ago, Jerry Manuel and Bruce Kimm were running the town's sum of two units baseball teams, and no individual really cared what either had to say, which usually wasn't frequently anyway.

"The relationship between the media and the Chicago White Sox was horrible when I got here," Guillen said of a Sox head office that once was stream like the Pentagon. "It was like enemies. I'm the alone manager who had a meeting with the players and said, 'Listen, talk to the media, beneficial or bad. If you play bad, you reckon upon they are going to say nice [stuff] about you?"'

TOUGHER SITUATION FOR BAKER

Baker hasn't pushed his players to be quite as render free of access During his time, Cubs players got preoccupied with the team's former broadcasters, bristling at the tiniest of criticisms from Steve Stone and Chip Caray. There's no question the distraction played a part in the Cubs' alarming collapse during the final week of the 2004 season.

When reporters walk into the Cubs' clubhouse these days, players are more apt to scream, "Take a day off" than exhibit up on the levels seen forward the South Side.

Maybe that's a byproduct of the ne to win now in Chicago.

"It's not Chicago, it's everywhere," Baker said. "We want it right now. We want it each day."

With his latter revelations of racist hate mail and feelings of being unwanted, Baker appears to be talking his way on the outside of a job. How greatly longer can general manager Jim Hendry listen to his manager discuss his personal situation before it becomes a distraction for a team that wait ons to get rattled easily?

Hendry tried to state talk about Baker's job status to ease last month, saying no decision will be made until the last of the season. Yet with Baker broaching make liables outside of baseball with national reporters upon an increasing basis, unwanted questions continue to fall forward the GM's doorstep.

Don't be brunted if Hendry goes back forward his word and dumps Baker before the last of the regular season.

Baker faced a similar overcast future four years ago, when the San Francisco Giants were refusing to expand his contract despite a scud toward the postseason.

"Yeah, if it were not that the last time I was in this situation in 2002 I wasn't worried about that," Baker said. "I was worried about winning the World Series."

He insists he is at peace with whatever decision Hendry makes.

"You live your life, simple as that," said Baker, a cancer survivor.

common day at a time, right?

"That's all you're going to live anyway," he said with a smile. "You can't live couple weeks at a time or brace days at a time. You spread your eyes in the morning, and that's the day you're living."

Guillen's render free of access door

Across town, Guillen assumes to be living on the opening [i]or[/i] close every day. Hardly a week goe through that one of his make comments [i]or[/i] remarkss doesn't make a splash forward a national level.

To outsiders, the filtered Guillen ensues across as insane. But before critics tee along Guillen offers a challenge.

"If you want to find disclosed something about me, have the [guts] to ask me" he said. "What, I'm going to kill you? I'm going to bite you? moreover people who never come to the clubhouse, they think I am the biggest ass you have forever met. Well, come to the clubhouse and engage the real Ozzie."

The door is always unclose -- at least to the manager's office.

"If I don't talk to the media, it's 'Ozzie doesn't talk to the media,"' Guillen said in a mocking voice. "If I talk too plenteous to the media ... I none say no to anybody. I don't care who you are or where you tend hitherward from, I don't say no. I have more question s with [GM] Kenny Williams and [chairman] Jerry Reinsdorf because they tried to reveal me, 'Don't be nice. Those [reporters] aren't your friends.' I don't care. yet sometimes I get in worry because I don't listen to them.

"People obtain caught up with what I do, the way I do it and the way I say material Well, maybe in the past they didn't have anybody acting like I act or talking like I talk. clan don't like to hear the truth"