Remarks a big deal in Little Havana

The Miami Marlins need to take note of the date of their next home game: Friday the 13th. They have until then to correct the mess that Ozzie Guillen has made, with the manager’s “I love Fidel Castro” comment.

And unless they come up with something more meaningful than the apology they’ve issued, believe me, bad luck will wash across the franchise like waves at high tide on South Beach.

I say that as someone who married into a Cuban family nearly 20 years ago. Someone who has a Cuban mother-in-law who can and does regularly recite every Castro transgression of the last half-century.

I was there once when someone made the case that Castro had done great things for his island nation’s literacy rate and health care. The high pitch of my mother-in-law’s angry backlash still rings in my ears, and I made a mental note never to praise a brutal dictator because he was nice to children or pets.

There is nothing in American sport that’s analogous to the contempt that Miami’s Cuban-american population feels for Castro. No athletic rivalry ever forced a mass exodus by people persecuted by a new regime.

My wife’s Tia Riselda puts it well when we drive down Calle Ocho in Little Havana, past the Versailles restaurant where Cuban exiles gather daily to drink their cafecitos and talk politics.

“In there, every day, they kill Castro many times,” she says.

For Guillen to think he could say he respects Castro and then go back to work as usual in the community whose families suffered most at Castro’s hands is beyond ignorant, beyond naive, beyond reason.

My mother-in-law has sent e-mails about what’s being said about Guillen on radio talk shows and how “they all want his blood.”

If Guillen is at work Friday night, so too will be the most ardent of the Castro haters. And, just as the Marlins seek a sparkling start to a new era in a new ballpark, the bitter animosity for their new manager very likely will steal the show.

This time, apologies aren’t enough for the latest example of Guillen letting his words run amok. He needs to be somewhere else on Friday the 13th, and really for the rest of April. A stiff suspension might appease those he has insulted, if the team acts quickly.

But the Marlins also would be wise to start working up a short list of replacements.