White Sox Spring Training, Day 5

Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010

Picture Perfect

A beautiful day today at Camleback Ranch — Glendale as more position players filed into camp.  First day of full squad is tomorrow, which means Ozzie Guillen’s annual speech to the troops to open camp … and the arrival for the first time of the MLB cameras and microphones.  Let’s see how that all goes …

Live Pitching

The pitchers certainly are ahead of the hitters early in camp.  Today, some of the pitching staff faced live hitters for the first time.  Gavin Floyd and Daniel Cabrera, in particular, impressed Guillen.

“You have to like seeing Gavin Floyd on the mound, and I was pretty impressed (by Daniel Cabrera),” Guillen noted.

Alexei

During his well-attended media session after the workout, Guillen was asked about Omar Vizquel and his potential impact on Gordon Beckham and Alexei Ramirez.

“Alexei started slow offensively,” Guillen said, “And that carried over to his defense early in the year.  I don’t expect him to mentally collapse like he did last year.”

Happy Birthday

Happy 74th birthday to Chicago White Sox/Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, who spent the morning watching workouts.

“God bless him because I don’t think I’m going to make it to 74,” Guillen laughed.  “He really means a lot to us.”

You could say Reinsdorf was Guillen’s “real dad,” he said, “My dad spent a few dollars on me but Jerry made me rich.”

Guillen noted that Reinsdorf shares the same birthday as former Sox pitcher and current BP pitcher Kevin Hickey.

“Jerry looks better than he does!” Guillen joked.