Praise Castro!

Ozzie Guillen, the Marlins manager/amateur shock jock got in trouble again over the weekend in a debacle that's like some sitcom episode where the main character learns to be nice and tolerant of others again. See, in an interview with Time, the new Marlins skipper said he “loves” Fidel Castro—the exact quote is, “I love Fidel Castro.” Ozzie, remember, coaches in Miami, a city with a lot of people living in it who risked their lives to escape Castro’s regime, so you can sort of guess what happened next: Some insane instant reactions, an apology for the “gaffe” (sorry I said the thing I thought, etc.), a five-game suspension given to Ozzie by the Marlins, and even some protests. Some folks are calling for him to be kicked out of baseball and some other folks are like, “Free speech! Also, everyone already knows Ozzie’s a loudmouth piece of shit, right? Remember when he called Jay Mariotti a fag?”

Ozzie got hired as part of the “new” Marlins—the Marlins who have craaAAaazy new colors, high-priced players, and a massively ugly sculpture to celebrate their home runs. These Marlins promise to be one of those teams that brings out the media, and Ozzie brought in the media, all right. His comments were even worse in light of the fact that no one in Florida gives a shit about baseball, at least not compared to Castro, a topic which even Gloria Estefan gets asked about every time she puts out a new record. Even if you think Ozzie is at his best when he’s half-drunk and babbling about whatever he wants, you’ve gotta admit “I love Castro” is a dumb thing to say.

On the other hand, it’s not like this was the first time he’s gone on record supporting Castro before, and he’s not a fan of his politics—he basically said Castro had a long career even though everyone hated him, and you can pretty much see why Ozzie would be into that. It also wasn’t the first time a baseball person said something that made most people go “What?!” To name just one example, Luke Scott, the Orioles' best hitter in 2010, said that Barack Obama is not a natural US citizen.

Guillen’s bad joke was a lousy PR move that came at a terrible time for one of the worst organizations in sports. The Marlins are evil, but not smart-evil like the Yankees; they’re bumbling-evil, like a lame Disney villain. They have made a concerted effort since winter to win over the almost entirely absent south Florida fan base, but a lot of their efforts have been incredibly sad or the wrong kind of funny. It says something that Guillen’s stupid (and, for all we know, half-drunk) comments have gotten more reaction and blowback than when the team got Miami-Dade County to pay for its stadium. There weren’t any protests then; 2 Live Crew’s Luther Campbell spoke out on the topic, but that was pretty much it.

It's understandable that Ozzie got suspended—people got fucking pissed, and the Marlins can’t afford the bad publicity—but it also makes you wonder why the hell the team hired him in the first place. Ozzie says crazy stuff. That’s his job. It might even be a helpful thing to have him acting as a lightning rod—when people are talking shit about Ozzie, they aren’t talking shit about the team or its incredibly sensitive players. His job sure isn’t winning games—as he said in the New Yorker article about the Marlins, “My job? Hey, listen, if I get involved in the game more often, that means we’re horseshit. See, I stay away from them? That means we winning.”

He apologized, sure, but doesn’t sound like he’s going to be too bummed to be away from the team for the next five days.