So, Ken Williams got a jaywalking ticket up in Seattle on Monday. He received a $56 ticket. (Mark Buehrle, anyone?) Eamonn had some fun with it yesterday. Someone even left him a nice comment.

But, Ozzie Guillen is having infinitely more fun than Eamonn or anyone else with it. In typical Guillen fashion, he yucked it up with reporters yesterday about Williams’ situation. If he had a standup routine, which he might think about implementing this offseason in Venezuela, these should all make the cut:

‘The police here don’t have anything better to do?” Guillen said, laughing. ”OK, if that costs you 60 bucks, how much does a drinking and driving cost here? Life in jail?”

[ ... ]

”My question to the city is, if you keep walking, what do they do? They shoot you? They chase you? It’s funny. That’s a lot of money. That’s a day of work for someone else. Maybe for Kenny, too.”

[ …}

”This morning I tried to get one on purpose,” Guillen said. ”I want to frame that thing. If that gets you on TV like Kenny … Kenny gets on TV for a ticket, I get on TV saying we’re going to hit people.”

For the record, I think Seattle cops bust out the taser on you if you keep walking. It’s what Seattle’s known for: rain, coffee and tasers.

Today over at Bulls Confidential, Doug Thomas argues this:

So my argument that spending huge money on Peavy proves Reinsdorf loves the Sox more than the Bulls wasn’t too moving to a lot of you. Different sports, different rules, Peavy’s awesome, Gordon stinks etc, etc.

How about spending 59.7 million dollars on Alex Rios? Are you going to tell me this guy is also better in his sport than Ben Gordon is in his? I’m not sure I’m buying it. Dude’s batting .264 with a .317 on base percentage. I’m not a huge baseball fan, but even I know that’s mediocre.

[ ... ]

I’m not even sure if Rios makes the Sox better this year, and if so, it came at a massive price. Maybe he replaces Dye in the future, but would you go out pay a guy batting .264 60 million to replace Dye?

However you break it down, when it comes to the Bulls, management is always talking about financial constraints and feasibility. The Sox saw no problem adding 100+ million in salary for two guys having down years, one of which couldn’t even play at the time of trade.

Thomas’ main argument here is this: Reinsdorf tends to spend more money, more frequently on the White Sox, a team that has a smaller profit margin year in and year out than the Bulls. This runs counter-intuitively to what one would assume: in theory, your business running on a leaner profit margin should be spending less than the one that’s profiting more. But Reinsdorf is on record as saying he gravitates more towards baseball and the White Sox in his fandom; he would trade all six Bulls titles for the World Series trophy. As such, Bulls fans might be a little irked by all this. (But what if you like the White Sox and the Bulls?)

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I have this same problem. I’ll go somewhere for a weekend — say, Wisconsin-Whitewater, to watch my brother play football — and we’ll be out at the bars drunk and it’ll be cold and I’ll ask where we are and whether we need to get a cab. My brother and his friends will say, yes, we’re a solid 45-minute-walk-in-freezing-conditions away but that we have to call one. Usually they don’t show up for about half an hour. And that’s when you can get past the busy signal.

And then I’ll say something dumb like, man, in CHICAGO, THIS wouldn’t be a PROBLEM. There are cabs everywhere! And then I have to remind myself that we’re not in Chicago, that millions of people don’t live in close vicinity of me, and that market demand for cabs in Whitewater is basically non-existent on a daily basis. And also to shut up, because that’s kind of a dick way to act.

Kenny Williams just learned a similar lesson. Walking across the street in Seattle, where the White Sox are currently playing a three-game series, Williams was cited for walking away from the crosswalk. I already know how this went down:

Williams was cited Monday outside Safeco Field for illegally crossing a street away from a crosswalk. The GM was on his cell phone after exiting a cab and was on his way into the stadium hours before his team’s game against the Mariners when a traffic-control officer nabbed him and wrote a $56 ticket.

Williams tried to tell the officer people in Chicago cross streets anywhere. He said the officer told him, not in Seattle.

“Oh really, Mr. Williams? They don’t do that in Chicago? What else don’t they do in Chicago? The winters there are cold!? Do tell me more! Really, this is great stuff. I’m so interested in your city of origin. Here is your traffic ticket; you can pay that online right here. Now be on your way.”

I am on record: I didn’t expect this White Sox team to be anything other than average. They had untested starting pitching in the form of John Danks and Gavin Floyd; they had aging stars in Jermaine Dye, Jim Thome and Paul Konerko (and later Ken Griffey Jr.); their big offseason acquisitions were Orlando Cabrera, an oft-injured Diamondbacks outfielder named Carlos Quentin and a nobody named Alexei Ramirez from Cuba. Couple that with the Yankee-like roster of the Tigers, the emergence of the Indians and the mere presence of the always pesky Twins, and this Sox team did not seem poised for an AL Central title.

But expectations can be deceptive. They can be wrong. The Tigers and Indians woefully underachieved. Carlos Quentin and Alexei Ramirez became integral parts of the White Sox lineup. (Quentin until his injury, was perhaps the AL MVP candidate. Alexei Ramirez has a good shot at Rookie of the Year.) And those aging vets? Jermaine Dye played out of his mind, while Jim Thome smacked 34 homers. Floyd flirted with a no-hitter or two and Danks became a big-game pitcher, hurling a gem in the White Sox’s one-game playoff against the Twins. Ozzie Guillen was Ozzie Guillen and kept this team in check.

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