Jose Guillen Does Not Forgive and Forget

You may or may not remember Jose Guillen's ugly departure from the Angels a few years ago, but the yarn goes a little something like this: Guillen openly questioned Manager Mike Scioscia's decision to bring in a pinch runner for Guillen, so Scioscia benched Guillen the rest of the season for insubordination and had him traded to the Nationals at the end of the year. Ouch, right?

Well, despite stops at a couple other teams in the meantime, Guillen still holds a grudge:

"Against these guys, I'm gonna tell you straightforward, the anger comes out of me," the Mariners right fielder said Friday. "I want to kill all those guys."
Despite his reputation as an angry guy, Guillen meant "kill" in the competitive, not the literal, sense. Metaphorically, he helped kill the Angels on Friday, hitting a two-run homer in the first inning and going 3-for-4 in Seattle's 10-6 victory.

"I love a lot of those guys I played with over there, but there's some guys I don't really love over there, and I want to show them something," Guillen said. "The decision they made was a stupid one, and it should have been handled different.

"I (wish) we could play them 162 times. That's going to be my motivation. And trust me, that's not good when Jose Guillen gets motivated. I really step up to a really different level."

Hopefully he means "kill" like you say when you want to "kill" your little brother when he wears your favorite pair of socks or something ... and not "kill" like when Tony Soprano decides someone needs to go. Because that would be a bit excessive.

One more thing: shouldn't Jose Guillen be motivated all the time, and not just when he plays the Angels? I mean, if that's when he really steps to a different level, shouldn't he aim for that level all the time?

(Arm bash: Baseball Primer Newsblog)