Wrigley rats draw manager’s wrath

Several baseball managers are boring, and then there is Ozzie Guillen. The leader of the Chicago White Sox is a loose cannon, to say the least.

Guillen is not impressed with Wrigley Field, especially the outdated batting cages behind the ivy-covered walls.

"You go to take batting practice, and the rats are bigger than pigs out there," Guillen said. "You want to take a look? I think the rats out there are lifting weights.''

After the Cubs swept a three-game weekend series and beat the White Sox 7-1 on Sunday, Guillen might want to hand a couple of rats some bats and put them in his lineup.

• SHEEP HAPPENS -- The White Sox won the World Series in 2005, and Guillen had them in first place in the American League Central on Tuesday, but Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti is calling for Guillen to get fired.

Angered by his team's punchless offense, Guillen lashed out June 1, when he challenged White Sox general manager Ken Williams and team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf to make personnel moves.

"As you may have noticed through the years," Mariotti wrote before the White Sox won their next seven games, "I am (Guillen's) only critic in the Chicago media, mostly because my soft colleagues either fear Guillen's wrath, enjoy how he rips me, work for one of the Reinsdorf-controlled broadcast outlets or are afraid of getting on the chairman's bad side.

"When Reinsdorf says he thinks Guillen is 'the Hispanic Jackie Mason,' most of his media sheep in town laugh right along. Put the man out of his misery. Fire him."

The Cubs have rats, black cats and a billy goat. Guillen is better off with his media sheep.

• QUITE A CHARACTER -- Michael Beasley, the power forward from Kansas State, went to five high schools and might go No. 1 in Thursday's NBA Draft.

The Chicago Bulls have the top pick, and the Bulls and other teams are investigating whether Beasley is a good kid or a potentially bad guy.

"I hear a lot about I have character issues, but I've yet to hear what those character issues are,'' Beasley said. "I just turned 19 in January. How mature do you want me to be?

"I'm still a kid. Off the court ... I'm going to live my life. I'm going to mess up."

Very convincing.

• IS THAT RIGHT? -- UNLV's basketball team is on a six-game exhibition tour of Australia. The Rebels open play Thursday against the Sutherland Sharks, and here's how the Aussie team hyped the game on its Web site:

"UNLV reached the final 16 of the NCAA championships and were knocked out by the eventual winners Kansas State University. This should be a big game and will kick off 7:30 p.m."

• NO DREAM TEAM -- Team USA has its 12-man basketball roster set for the Olympics and will train in Las Vegas. All the NBA stars are coming out -- Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and maybe even Wade's squeeze, Star Jones.

Wade's off-court game obviously is weak.

COMPILED BY MATT YOUMANS REVIEW-JOURNAL