I’m going to attempt to write a column about cities, sports and ethnicity.
One of the cities, Chicago, I have lived in. The other, Miami, I have not, but I visited over the winter. It’s quite nice. The sport in question, baseball, has been a part of my life since I was born. The race in question, Cuban, has not. I am not Cuban, but I am Latino.
Ozzie Guillen, similarly, is not Cuban but Latino. Ozzie is Venezuelan, played shortstop for the White Sox for 13 seasons and in 2005 managed them to their first World Series title in 88 years.
In one of the most confusing moves of baseball’s offseason, Ozzie, as a manager, was traded to the Miami Marlins organization to manage the 2012 season, the Marlins’ first after dropping the “Florida” from the team name to focus more on the immediate Miami fan base.
Ozzie generated headlines last week by commenting in an interview with Time Magazine that he “love(s)” and “respect(s) Fidel Castro” because “a lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that (expletive) is still here.”
The Miami Marlins organization promptly suspended him for five games. Ozzie has since expressed regret over his comments and has apologized to the Miami fan base, which an official statement released by the Marlins organization described as “a community filled with victims of the dictatorship.”
I am not here to talk about Castro – I’m embarrassingly ignorant of North American policy toward Cuba post 1959. I’m not really even here to talk about Ozzie – he wasn’t my manager – and I was still a sad Phillies fan when the White Sox won the World Series.
I’m here to talk about fan bases, I guess. And population demographics. And media coverage. Freedom of speech, first amendment. Immigration. And obligations to all of the above, maybe.
Bear with me – I’m still trying to sort through it all. So is every national columnist. Hell, so is Ozzie.
What troubles me most about this story is the fact that this is not the first time Ozzie has expressed admiration for Castro.
Rick Telander, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote a column on Monday about an interview he had with Ozzie in 2008, when Ozzie was still the manager of the White Sox. Telander asked Ozzie “who’s the toughest man you know,” and Ozzie answered “Fidel Castro” because “everybody’s against him, and he still survives, has power.” Ozzie’s views haven’t changed; if anything, he sounds like he plagiarized himself.
Ozzie has a history of crass language and behavior as a manager, to the point where the media came up with a slogan for it: “Ozzie being Ozzie.” It was cute. He made fun of the Cubs on the North side. He called himself a “crazy Mexican.” He was young, one of the best managers in the game. The Sox were division champions in 2008, the year the interview ran.
It was all part of the new-look White Sox, a new era after the Go-Go Sox of 1959 and the South Side Hitmen of 1977. It was his shtick. You never knew what crazy thing Ozzie was going to say or do next.
Nobody took offense to Ozzie’s 2008 comments in Chicago. According to the 2010 census Chicago has a Latino population of 28.9 percent. However, 21.4 percent of Chicago’s entire population is Mexican and only .3 percent is Cuban.
Miami, in contrast, has an extremely large Latino population – 65 percent – and a Cuban population of 34.3 percent. Only 2.1 percent of the city’s Latinos are Mexican. A quarter of the city identifies as “Other Hispanic or Latino.”
There is a disconnect here; it’s as if because “our” Latinos weren’t the same “type” of Latinos as “their” Latinos, we shouldn’t (and, truly, didn’t) get offended over Ozzie’s 2008 comments.
In a sense, the media reinforced Ozzie’s beliefs that he did not say anything wrong. It was Ozzie being Ozzie. Chicago, with its minimal Cuban population, essentially allowed him to get away with it. Miami, with its large Cuban population, did not and has been vocal in its backlash.
This offseason the Miami Marlins went for broke to build a contending baseball team. They constructed a brand new stadium, signed free agent pitchers Heath Bell and Mark Buehrle (ex-Ace of Ozzie’s White Sox) and Dominican superstar shortstop Jose Reyes and traded for Guillen to manage them all.
The team made a concerted effort to appeal to Miami’s Cuban population – an effort all but destroyed with a few misguided sentences in a Time interview.
It’s telling that the Miami Marlins organization suspended Ozzie, instead of the Major League Baseball organization. In all honesty, I don’t know if Major League Baseball would have had a case. As a governing body, it would have been irresponsible to dole out punishment based on fan base demographics.
As a Latino baseball fan, Ozzie’s comments upset me. But as a non-Cuban, I don’t know if I have a right to be upset.
A baseball friend of mine said he thought the suspension was stupid and that if the Kansas City Royals manager had made the comments nobody would have given a (expletive). In reality, the Kansas City Royals manager didn’t have to. The Chicago White Sox manager already did for him in 2008 – a local World Series hero by the name of Ozzie Guillon.
And my baseball friend was right: nobody gave a (expletive).
