Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Ozzie...You're Out! (Not Really)

   Ozzie Guillen got caught in a pickle.  His quotes about Fidel Castro from a Time magazine article got him in trouble.  Of course, he's protected by free speech, but he happens to find himself in Miami.  He failed to parrot the hard line denunciations of Castro, and although he really didn't say he was a supporter of him, he said enough to make some new enemies in South Florida and they want to destroy him.

   Ozzie Guillen won't be destroyed. Probably his new enemies will not be satisfied by anything he said after the comments he made about Castro. But after all, he is a baseball personality and not a politician, so what he does for his team may in the end be more important than his comments (he is known for making outlandish comments anyway).

   The unfortunate thing is that the Marlins have a fear of a increasingly smaller part of the Miami population. It has been shown in surveys that the younger generation and newer arrivals don't have such an extreme position on the issue.  Probably the best example is his own player, Gaby Sanchez, whose father is from Cuba and himself born here.who said "He looked very sincere to me. We just have to move forward and keep going. We've just got to go out there and play baseball and have another good game against the Phillies and win."

   This is baseball! These are baseball people not politicians. The political groups live for these types of situations and although, in Miami, they blurred the lines between baseball and Cuba politics, it still is only baseball. 

   Play ball.  (And end the embargo)

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