If you follow baseball, you know new Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen regularly shoots his mouth off. But a comment reportedly made to Time -magazine – that he loves Fidel Castro — is absolutely atrocious. It defies logic to believe that Guillen doesn’t know Castro’s history and doesn’t realize that many Cubans have died trying to escape he freedom in Miami. Because of the incredible backlash to his comment, Guillen is holding a new conference today to try to explain and apologize. From USA Today:
In an area that’s home to close to a million Cuban Americans, where tales of Castro’s ruthless treatment of his own countrymen and the suffering he has engendered are daily fodder in coffee shops and gathering places, Guillen’s remarks created a predictable outcry — at a time when the Marlins were counting on Guillen to bring a buzz and identity to their previously moribund brand.
“It’s like going to New York’s Jewish district and saying, ‘Hitler wasn’t so bad. He managed to stay in power for a few years,’ ” said veteran Spanish-language baseball announcer Amaury Pi-Gonzalez, who fled Cuba at age 17 and lived in Miami for five years.
