Last edited Tue Apr 10, 2012, 04:28 PM - Edit history (1)

I find myself sympathetic to all parties in this kerfluffle. If only Ozzie had just STFU.

"Guillen's remarks, which were offensive to an important part of the Miami community and others throughout the world, have no place in our game," said Selig, who, with Orioles owner Peter Angelos, sat with Castro when Baltimore played an exhibition game in Cuba in 1999.

All parties except Selig. He should definitely STFU.

has become a ritual for politicians..now I see the Marlins are engaging in it..

I suppose there are opinions that warrant suspensions such as racial/bigoted comments and praising Hitler. But the guy clarified what I meant in that 2008 statement more than he ever could after this firestorm(taken as honestly). There can be qualities you like but dislike the whole thing. I can't think of a better or as contraversial example from the top of my head but I hate the Spurs but enjoy the way play basketball and the way they quietly(by volume of articles, statements, and dedicated time(rather than highlight clip) spent by analysts discussing them) play to the top of the standings. I also found it interesting Popovich stated his dislike of the 3-point shot but he is one of the best coaches at utilizing it. They're generally among the top 3-point and this year they are the best last time I checked the stats.

And you don't get Ozzie Guillen without getting Ozzie Guillen. Yes, Castro was a bad guy. But Ozzie didn't dispute that. He acknowledges his ability to survive.

of the game???

That's a mighty slippery slope to start traveling up.

Who may have had knowledge of Kennedy's assassination.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/fidel-castro-jfk-assassination-book_n_1364770.html

Actually Peter Coors killed Kennedy.

he also has no problem with little Bush sitting with Nolan Ryan.

I think you mean his father Joe, a founder of the Heritage Foundation.

are supporting Castro and neither was Guillen. Just said that he liked him for his toughness considering all the people that tried to kill him which I agree with considering CIA tried their hand.

Look, I got the shit scared out of me in 1962. I suppose not many of you were even born by then. We got real close to Armageddon. And Fidel was mostly responsible for that.

Since 1898 Cuba has been tied to the hip of the US. And we have made a mess of the whole thing.

Shit, JFK and the CIA tried to overthrow his government, an action that took place before the missile crisis.... can you really blame Castro for trying to protect himself by buddying up to the Soviet Union?

Communism aside, he was still a tyrant. The failure of the invasion was Kennedy's fault.

Sorry, but cut the cut and dry crap.

This isn't to say he is or right or wrong(I think firing nukes is wrong in all cases) but like arguing over whether a huge cigarette tax increase in NYC is right or wrong ignores that it creates a thriving black market where people purchases cigarettes in neighboring states and sell for discount prices, the reaction was an unintended consequence, plus they had the facts on their side when referring to US aggression in Latin America countries. Here the US tried unsuccessfully several times to remove him with no signs of stopping. This was what he felt was the only way to prevent this. Luckily through that era no one fired and despite the very possibility someone in any country that felt scared was fickle enough to not do so. I imagine the fact it never happened had odds similar to a Sun Belt team winning the BCS Championship or lower. We came real close when that Solviet Commander of the submarine decided not to despite everyone else wanting to do so on that ship and the idea not one nuke was launched thru the entire era was simply amazing especially when there were countless foolish decisions made by all parties involved.

The policies he enacts that effects Cuba I can't say much as I don't know much so I don't have any disagreements as far as that goes.

Apparently Castro the Dictator is against Free Speech---

Kind of Ironic eh?

Look I know many Cubans and I get it that this is a sore subject for them. But did they actually listen to what Ozzie said?? He was talking about the fact that Castro is still alive. For some odd reason he's still kicking. He admires that. Was it stupid to say?? Sure, but English isn't Ozzie's first language.

I agree up above - pre-fabricated anger over nothing really.

but my God---mention anything remotely positive about Castro and you'll get beat to death with the exile community.

"It was misintrepreted by what I mean in Spanish," he said. Guillen said he was trying to say that he couldn't believe that someone who has hurt so many "is still in power" and added he did not share Castro's ideology.







http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/10/2739843/miami-marlins-ozzie-guillen-in.html

Series-ly...it's the old guard, offspring of those who left couldn't care less.

Oh and one other thing.... every exile I've ever met--- and there were plenty---owned a 100 acre plantation and were wildly rich before Castro took their belongings.

But it's been over 50 years now...and you're right, they were rich...you don't hear the poor complaining about Castro.

I don't think we're allowed to bring up Bastista's policies in the USA!

Shhhhhhhh.

Fuck the poor Cubans who were helped by Castro's policies. You never hear the ex-pat community talking about the poor in Cuba that got fucked by Batista and the US.
Never.

(Full disclosure for anyone who cares, I'm a Latin American historian). This situation has my blood boiling.

"Castro's policies" were only able to succeed with the massive aid given to him by the Soviets. Once they left, Cuba's one-class communist system fell on its ass. I do not agree with the economic blockade that the US continues to employ against them, but I think it will all change soon once the old guard is dead.

And I think Ozzie Guillen was suspended by Marlins' management more for his utter stupidity than for deliberately offending the Miami Cubanos.

where help comes from. If I'm poor, and unemployed in 1958, and now I have a job and it's 1962, I don't give a rat's ass where that aid came from. To them, it came from Cuba and Castro. And that was all that mattered.

You can't claim pissyness on this because you were alive in 1962 and others weren't (or may not have been). You know where my folks lived in 1962? In New York City. The prospect of nuclear war still scares the hell out of my mother. They'd have been obliterated in seconds- and they lived every day with that fear. As kids. I grew up minutes from a major naval weapons station, during the end of the cold war. I sure as hell know what it's like to fear the "Evil Empire." Blame Castro for that all you want, but the US and Russia had missiles pointed at each other long before Castro entered the picture. And if it wasn't Cuba, it would've been someplace else.

What I'm trying to tell you is that anti-Castro Cubans were mostly rich a-holes, the 1% in today's parlance- who for decades, and with our blessings, ripped off the poor, exploited poverty, etc. etc. All things that I'm adamantly against. Castro is a bastard because he was a dictator, like all the dictators we propped up whom he claimed to hate. He was a hypocrite.
But the anti-Castro Cubans crying foul now are hypocrites of a different sort.

I cannot friggin' believe I'm debating this in the Sports forum. This is unreal. We have freedom of speech for a reason. Don't like it, Miami? Go back to Cuba and see how far it gets you (and therein lies one of the problems with the Cuban experiment). I don't know how the hell anyone teaches the Cuban revolution down there. Yikes.

That happened 20 years after the revolution. Don't forget that. They were not part of the "1%".

And there is no "freedom of speech" when it comes to corporations. Guillen should have been fired for his enormously big stupid mouth. I read what he said last week in Time, and I still can't believe it. But he's who the stupid con-man, Loria, hired. Serves him right.

Health care for most Cubans in Miami is worse than health care for most Cuban citizens, and the young Cuban Americans recognize it. If you break down party lines among Cuban "refugees" with their second generation adult children, it shows that the 2nd gen Cuban Americans are overwhelmingly Democrat.

But someone praising a leader of another country who has better health care and a fairer taxation system... get suspended!

We really need to ban the republican party. Geez.

He was praising him for still being alive.

They are really worried about the "product" part of the business right now.

Look down here in SoFla the Cubans run the media. The highest rated station is Univision. The #2 is Telemundo. There were people on the air yesterday calling for him to be fired for something he said. Not for something he actually did on the field.

Oh and the first game - do you guys know who received the loudest applause?? Ozzie. Not Jose Reyes. Not Hanley. It was Ozzie. He was also given a standing Ovation in September at the end of the season last year when he was hired. People are fickle around here. I don't understand it. I'm just a little Jewish girl from Connecticut!!

read the comments after the Ozzie stories.

That's all you need to know about the support for Ozzie.

... on the job, as well?

Hmmmmmm.

#1-The only reason they get easy citizenship is because of US imperialism in the war against Spain. So they are products of this imperialism. That means other people who didn't float ashore have to wait much longer while Cubans get easy access to citizenship.

#2. A higher percentage of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans flee their capitalist "utopias" than Cubans fleeing Communism.

#3. Despite Mexican Americans being the over whelming majority of the so called "Latino" community in the USA, ONLY the Cuban voice is heard on foreign policy and this voice is often very reactionary and antithetical to the USA but subservient to the CIA masters.

#4. When a local nut case like Rubio is exposed for lying about his family fleeing Castro when in fact they left two years prior to the takeover, they don't have any outrage? Why not? Are many of them lying about their real nature?

#5 A lot of prisoners were shipped out of Cuba by Castro and the USA took in a lot of them. When will they fess up to the hardened criminals who came ashore?

#6 Castro is very popular in Venezuela (Guillen's home country) and has been since 1959. He once had a turnout of over 1,000,000 in Caracas. Nixon got "stoned" in Colombia OTOH.

#7. Guillen should NOT apologize to that community for exercising his freedom of speech. The Marlins are a joke of an organization for suspending him.

He did nothing illegal and did nothing against the rules of the game. This suspension is absolute bullshit.

Crickets

OK, Fidel wasn't the best Cuban leader imaginable.

However, he was the best one available in 1959 and a hell of a lot better than the crook Batista was or than any one of you would have been.

Next thing you know, they'll turn their health care over to private insurance rackets.