As baseball fans, Chicagoans, and especially White Sox fans know all too well, Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen is prone to saying things that don't exactly go over well. And it only took into the first weekend of the 2012 season, a short four months after being hired as the first manager of the newly re-christened Miami Marlins, for Guillen to offend a significant segment of the south Florida population.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Guillen stated that he loves and admires Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The context from which Guillen claims he was making this expression of respect was his admiration that Castro was able to remain in power for over a half-century with countless people that were after his removal from control Cuba and even after his life.
However, and logically so, this didn't sit well with the communities in America who have a direct connection with the atrocities committed at Castro's will, most notably those Florida communities that are home to millions of Cuban exiles and their successive generations.
Columnist for The Miami Herald and for ESPN Dan Le Batard, a second-generation American of Cuban descent, said yesterday on ESPN programming that the seas between Florida and the island nation of Cuba is "filled with dead Cubans" who risked their lives to escape Cuba and Castro reign. Castro's crimes against his people is indeed akin Hitler and Nazi Germany, Stalin and Communist Russia, or Saddam Hussein to Iraq, all of these to varying degrees. To some, saying, as a representative of Miami and a revitalized crown jewel of the community, you respect and admire Castro would be on the same level of staing in New York's Times Square and saying you respect and admire Osama bin Laden.
This is not new territory for Guillen, but his latest bout with poor judgment has ramifications for the Miami Marlins, not just Ozzie Guillen. Certainly, the Marlins draw many of their fans from Caribbean-born and descended Americans and those countries beyond the shores of Florida. The Marlins have built their business model with this in mind, favoring on-field personnel with Hispanic backgrounds, including stars Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes and Guillen himself. Wealthy Cuban investors (and I'm trying my hardest not to conjure images of Tony Montana) that sink their wealth in not only the Marlins but in South Florida in general, hold a potentially bright future for Marlins in their collective hands. If the Marlins are going to become a thriving institution in south Florida, these sorts of sentiments uttered by Guillen is not wise ones.
And now, once again, Ozzie Guillen is contrite and apologetic. And I believe it is sincere. Just as he did to homosexuals and other groups in the past, once again he has to back track and explain himself to Cubans, to other Hispanics, and to Americans at large what he actually meant, that his comments were taken out of context (the typical and over-used fallback excuse of a celebrity who spoke without first thinking), and to iron things out with a fan base for whom he caused near irreconcilable damage.
Guillen has dug himself out of holes his mouth has created before. And he very well do it again, thanks to his contrition, the generosity of the people he offended, coupled with the support of P.R. department the Marlins franchise, which just cannot afford a major blow in the infancy of its rebranding. However, just as likely, Guillen just may not recover from this latest incident and it may cost him his job, because the Marlins know that a problem such as the one Ozzie created is something that may take years to correct.
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