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If I heard correctly Ozzie Guillen

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reno cool
been watching some coverage on this. Commentators saying this is the worst thing he's ever said in his life, Castro is Cuban Hitler etc... People who support Castro are unable to exist in Miami.

How along is everybody supposed to put up with these Cuban Miami assholes? The only reason they hate Castro is because he took their ill gotten wealth and nationalized it. fuck them.
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He caused an uproar when he called Jay Mariotti a fag. I wish he would shut up, non-stop Ozzie on Chicago radio.
 
durito
Not nearly as brilliant as some of his other policies. Given the booming economies in south america + the price of oil and Venezuela should be booming like brazil, instead the economy has been destroyed, it's the most dangerous place in the world, and none of his social policies have helped anyone.
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the only place where they actively target diplomats for kidnappings, enough said http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-venezuela-diplomatbre8391d1-20120410,0,4183924.story
 
So the Marlins suspended him. :lol: mlb should fine the Marlins.

Again the media is such a piece of shit. They'll debate forever what he said, but I cannot find the context of his comment. It's fair enough to expect your coach is not gonna go out of his way to make political comments. On the other hand if he was asked he has every right to express his feelings.
 
reno cool
So the Marlins suspended him. :lol: mlb should fine the Marlins.

Again the media is such a piece of shit. They'll debate forever what he said, but I cannot find the context of his comment. It's fair enough to expect your coach is not gonna go out of his way to make political comments. On the other hand if he was asked he has every right to express his feelings.
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He should have the sense to keep his politics to himself and not alienate his fanbase. He gets paid enough to be professional.

A manager with common sense would never put himself in that situation to begin with.
 
reno cool
So the Marlins suspended him. :lol: mlb should fine the Marlins.

Again the media is such a piece of shit. They'll debate forever what he said, but I cannot find the context of his comment. It's fair enough to expect your coach is not gonna go out of his way to make political comments. On the other hand if he was asked he has every right to express his feelings.
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Joe Sheehan's newsletter today:

The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. IV, No. 17
April 10, 2012


MLB had no business whatsoever suspending Ozzie Guillen for his comments praising Cuban president Fidel Castro's longevity in power. A man's political opinions have never and should never subject him to disciplinary action by the league. We have seen players, most recently and notably Rays outfielder Luke Scott, express all manner of seemingly ill-informed takes without suffering the league's wrath. We have seen players protest within the bounds of reasonable discourse, such as when Carlos Delgado eschewed appearing for the National Anthem. We occasionally upbraid players, as a sports world, when we don't think they show enough concern about the world around them -- African-American athletes of recent vintage have been taken to task for their lack of political will, especially when contrasted with outspoken, activist African-American athletes of recent generations. It's not the league's place to legislate against the exercise of free speech or to encourage it.


A team, however…a team has a different set of concerns. This kerfuffle ($1, Christina Kahrl), for the Miami -- there's your keyword, folks -- Marlins required some type of action, not because Guillen's comments were out of line, but because they had the potential to negatively affect the team's business. Let's be clear about why Guillen is taking a five-game suspension from his employers: because he may have cost them money, and suspending him was the easiest way in which they could minimize the losses. This is an economic decision that has nothing at all to do with Cuba, Fidel Castro or Ozzie Guillen's long history of being opinionated. This is public relations, not politics. This is the Marlins, at a critical moment in their history and desperately trying to win over a city they've bent over for years, making damned sure that they don't lose any of the momentum gained by their new ballpark or waste the hundreds of millions of dollars they committed in finding players to romp around in it.


It's not Guillen's comments were wrong, or even particularly controversial in and of themselves. There is -- taking a very detached view here -- something to be said for a leader who runs a nation for a half-century despite the condemnation of the world's largest superpower and through the death of its benefactor nation. That doesn't make Fidel Castro good, and it doesn't make the atrocity that Cuba has become under his watch defensible in any way. It doesn't mean that you can defend Castro's leadership. But taking Guillen's comments at face value -- "I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that mother------ is still here." -- I find them to be inoffensive. Guillen isn't backing communism, a dictatorship or a revolution; he's respecting the survival of a man millions have wished dead for decades.


That leaves the part of the quote I omitted. "I love Fidel Castro." Now, I think we can all agree that Guillen doesn't mean that literally. If he did, well, we're all focused on the wrong part of the story. For reasons that are beyond my grasp of linguistics to explain, the construct, "I love…" has become detached from its original romantic meaning and become a commonplace phrased used where any number of noun-verb combinations would probably be more appropriate. (The word "suck", used colloquially, has gone through a similar evolution from its rather graphic original meaning.) Think about your day. How many times have you used those words in a context that, taken literally, is ludicrous? Thinking just about my last few days, I've expressed my love for Sophie's roast pork platter; for "Mad Men"; for my Roku; for free Wi-Fi in public places. In the last newsletter I wrote "As much as I love Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw…", and I wasn't outing myself. Ozzie Guillen isn't taking up arms in the fight to defend and protect Castro or his revolution, and I doubt that in the weeks before the Time interview he'd spent more than a minute thinking about the man. He used a phrase that has become a common expression roughly akin to "I like," and to beat him over the head with it is ignorant of how we know those words to be used every single day.


I am 41-year-old American of Irish heritage born and bred in New York City, though, and it's fair to argue that my position on the matter shouldn't carry very much weight. Had Guillen made the comments a year ago, while managing the Chicago White Sox, they may have raised eyebrows but not affected the White Sox' bottom line. In taking a job in Miami, the locus of Cubans in the United States, where there are still many people who lost family to Castro's policies, Guillen lost the ability to say nice things about Fidel Castro. That he didn't recognize this is one of the things we love about Ozzie Guillen, of course, and again, I'm unwilling to condemn him for what he said. The reality is, a Miami-based business that's just taken hundreds of millions of dollars from the locals can't have its most visible employee expressing public admiration for the most hated man in South Florida. Given the sensitivity of the community to the topic and the critical importance of the moment to the Marlins, a five-game suspension is nothing. It's a completely defensible, even generous, punishment for a statement that alienates the team from the exact fan base it is trying to court.


There's a greater lesson here, one that goes beyond Miami to the rest of baseball, and in fact, the sports world at large. As I peruse my Twitter feed, I see a lot of references to DUI arrests and Josh Lueke, the Rays' reliever who was accused of rape and pled no contest to lesser charges four years ago. Behavior isn't what's being acted upon here, though, so attempting to compare behaviors misses the point. Guillen isn't being suspended for what he said; Guillen is being suspended because the Marlins like money and don't want to lose very much of it and this is the way to make that happen. As much as it might be unfair or indelicate to point this out, when Shin-Soo Choo or Miguel Cabrera or Derek Lowe gets caught driving under the influence, there is no economic penalty to the teams, and therefore no incentive for them to act to curb the bad behavior. Josh Lueke may be a terrible person, but his career isn't going to rise and fall based on his actions in a California bar four years ago, it's going to rise and fall based on his ability to locate his fastball and find an effective secondary pitch, and I assure you that the day he works out of a first-and-third, no-out jam at Tropicana Field, he's going to be cheered like a conquering hero.


No, it's not about behavior, it's about economic impact. The obvious parallel is to John Rocker. Back in 2000, Rocker was the subject of an offseason Sports Illustrated profile in which he made insulting comments about a variety of categories of people, many of the words racist, sexist and homophobic. The profile received widespread coverage and, as spring training approached, MLB was faced with rising pressure to address the issue or face consequences that could have cost the industry significant amounts of money. So Rocker was suspended for 28 games (later reduced on appeal to 14) as a way for MLB to show that it, as an industry, was not racist, sexist or homophobic…and would the women, gay people and non-white people please continue to buy tickets, souvenirs and support our sponsors? Thanks.


Follow the money. The Marlins had to suspend Guillen not because of his opinions, but because to not suspend him would have cost them money. Until DUIs, alleged rapes, wife beatings, drunken revelry, PED usage and whatever other bad behavior costs teams money, they will continue to act as if that behavior comes without any cost, and treat the bad actors accordingly.
 
Well, I don't know what the details of his contract are. Would they be allowed to suspend Ozzie if he proclaimed his love and support of Obama, while most Miami fans are Republicans?
I hope this backfires on them. I'm sure there are more than a handful of Miamians who are sick of all the pandering to the anti- Castro crowd.
 
You'll get no argument from me that Ozzie is stupid. He needs to STFU and make double switches.

MLB managers are annoying because their effect on the outcome game is overrated but Ozzie has a special annoying quality about him.
 
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