LBS Exclusive: Oney Guillen Takes the Fall in Twitter Controversy

Oney Guillen is best known as the son of outspoken White Sox manager, Ozzie Guillen. Oney was drafted by the organization in ’07, played two seasons, and then began working in the team’s scouting department last season. He was looking forward to his second season in the team’s front office until a twitter controversy arose, leading to his resignation on Friday.

Talking with Oney on Saturday, you could sense his frustration in what he called a contradiction with the White Sox organization, “You want to keep stuff private but you approve a reality show for the team. You say you want to keep stuff in-house but you agree to do a reality show. It’s contradictory, don’t you think?”

Oney was confused because he never felt he was critical about the organization on his twitter account and because he had been posting tweets for over a month without the team telling him to stop. While he did concede that the organization probably wouldn’t want him to influence decisions with his tweets (he made several positive remarks about Andruw Jones and even advocated for re-signing A.J. Pierzynski), he was disappointed that they never approached him to talk about the issue.

“I didn’t tweet anything bad at all,” Guillen lamented. “I only heard stuff through the grapevine. If they had asked me to close down the account I would have but they never said anything.” Oney said he felt there was a double-standard because other members within the organization have twitter accounts and that didn’t seem to be a problem. He felt he was being watched under a microscope because of who his dad was, not because of what he was writing.

Tension seemed to have been brewing within the White Sox organization the past few months. First, the team grumbled when Ozzie Guillen signed up for a twitter account. Then, when Ozzie had plans to expand his thoughts onto a website, the team nixed the plans. Oney’s resignation seemed to be the culmination of mounting problems that could last into the season, but it’s his final words that will ring true for most Sox fans, “Why are we worrying about what a 24-year-old kid is twittering instead of winning games?”

Opening day is only two weeks away and suddenly a reality show doesn’t look like the best of ideas for a club that’s already engaged in a soap opera.