Much like their fans, the reaction of Cubs manager Lou Piniella to White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and Guillen's views of Piniella are extremely different.

Growing up in Chicago and living here most of my life, it has appeared to me that White Sox fans were more offended by the existence of another Chicago baseball franchise than their North Side counterparts. In the case of the managers, although there is a mutual respect between the two, only the energetic Guillen was interested in expounding on the city's other manager at length.

"One thing about Lou, he's not afraid to make moves on the field," Guillen told me. "Lou makes moves and isn't worried about how he's looked at if it doesn't work out. When he faces the other manager in the other dugout, he forces him to make some moves that they don't always feel that comfortable doing. That takes a special talent."

I asked Guillen about the give-and-take between him and Piniella; the two managers occasionally rib each other through media outlets.

"Lou is one of my mentors in the game," Guillen said. "I think he is a real baseball man. People respect him and watch and listen to him closely. He has fun with it because he's all baseball, but he's a serious man when it comes to the game and you can learn a lot from that."

Piniella likes going up and back with Guillen, but when I approached him about his viewpoints of the Sox manager, he wasn't really interested in expounding.

"Ozzie's a very good baseball man and really, really gets a lot out of his players," Piniella said. "As far as the Cubs and White Sox thing goes, though, right now every team in every series is big for us, especially the way things have been going for the team lately."

Guillen and Piniella did some Chevrolet commercials together the past couple of seasons, before the auto industry's money disappeared in the economic downturn. Piniella was asked if he'll miss doing the commercials with Guillen.

"Not really," was Piniella's reply. "Not really."

With 20 years' age difference between these two unique individuals, a generation gap separates their philosophies, according to Guillen.

"We grew up in different eras," he said. "Lou grew up in the Billy Martin era, and learned from him. I grew up with [Braves manager] Bobby [Cox] and [former White Sox manager] Jeff Torborg. Right now, family and kids being around the team is more common and more important. When Lou was playing, and when he started managing, kids weren't around the clubhouse as much.

"I encourage my players to keep bringing their kids in the clubhouse, even when we struggle. We're not around our families enough, so to me, during the summer, it's important to have them with us as much as we can."

Actually, Guillen's children were allowed to hang out in the clubhouse when he was playing for Torborg back in the late 1980s. At that time, upper management frowned upon children being in the clubhouse, and Torborg had to battle for his wishes. That only proves Guillen's theory about the generation gap in baseball history. Still, Guillen said he feels that Piniella might have been more ready for the job when he was Guillen's age.

"Lou had more energy than I have at my age," Guillen said. "He managed in New York when he was in his 40s, dealing with a lot of [stuff] that maybe I couldn't have done or dealt with. He was tough and honest, just like now."

I asked Guillen about the similarities between the two managers.

"I think we are both honest with the media, and that's done for a good reason," he said. "If you rewind those comments that we make and slow everything down, it's said for a purpose, so everybody knows where our teams and we stand as managers."

And the differences?

"I know I do some things differently," Guillen said. "I like to go out to dinner with my players and sometimes have a drink. I hang around with their wives and kids. That's probably not very common among many managers now. But Lou probably did that when he was a young manager in New York and was closer to the other players' ages. Believe me, though, he likes his players and he respects them like I do. Either way, both ways work out pretty well."

Appointment television for Guillen is watching Piniella in his postgame press conferences.

"Everybody watches 'Baseball Tonight,'" Guillen said. "For me, I never miss Lou's postgames, especially after they lose. When they win, it's easy. When they lose, I like to see what he has to say."

Piniella had this to say about the White Sox and their manager as the intra-city rivals prepare to play their first series of 2009 interleague action: "It's about the White Sox and the Cubs on the field, not about me and Ozzie. I enjoy talking to him, but when the game starts, it's about the competition on the field between the two teams."

I've had the privilege of dealing with some wonderful baseball men who have managed the Cubs and Sox, but none of them has ever come close to giving the type of on-the-record information that these two special baseball men spew out on an everyday basis. The Chicago baseball public is probably the best-informed fan base in all of sports.

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