Contrite Guillen takes big step
Controversial manager knows he crossed line
He said he was sorry, and embarrassed, and hurt. Ten times, 20 times, 30 times, in Spanish and in English and sometimes a little of both. “I’m here to say I’m sorry with my heart in my hands,” Ozzie Guillen mentioned at one point in his news conference Tuesday. “I’m here on my knees to apologize,” at another. “I don’t want to go through this again. Never in my life have I suffered so much,” at a third.
“I want to walk in the street with my head up and feel not this bad.”
And this: “You learn from mistakes, and this is the biggest mistake so far in my life.”
Learn? He’d better. Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie. Sigh. As an early-season crisis goes, this one takes the flan. The Miami Marlins’ worst-case public relations scenario. As a new Miami baseball manager, he could overtax his bullpen. He could mangle his pinchhitting decisions. He could bat the pitcher fourth and the first baseman ninth.
But what he absolutely, positively could not do in South Florida was utter public words of admiration for Fidel Castro, as Time magazine quoted him. That’s 5,000 times worse than wearing an Auburn cap to an Alabama wedding.
“Very stupid,” he called it. That motion is carried unanimously. It was foolish to even address the subject, given he has been in some soup for seemingly kind remarks toward Venezuela strongman Hugo Chavez.
Rule of thumb: Better to be complimentary about your left-handed pitching rather than leftwing dictators.
So what did he and the Marlins do last weekend as this matter exploded? Flip through the damage-control manual to the section, Unbelievably Knuckleheaded Comments, Manager? The bilingual inquisition lasted more than 45 minutes Tuesday, from the new ballpark in Little Havana, where Castro is the face of evil. Guillen went to his water bottle often.
A full confessional was necessary. So was the five-game suspension. Some wanted more. Some wanted his head, but that seemed like emotions doing the talking.
For one thing, who’s to say his explanation — that his Castro comments were misinterpreted because he was thinking in Spanish and talking in English — doesn’t have validity?
He’s been around enough blocks to know to be careful, so he deserves a sanction but not a dismissal. Say what he means, mean what he says and move on.
And how he moves on is the pertinent issue. His words again: “It’s not what’s going to happen today, it’s what’s going to happen in the future.”
For good measure, he added Tuesday that he hates Castro and would sooner die than vote for Chavez’s re-election. Ozzie never says things halfway, even when he is trying to erase something else he didn’t say halfway.
What should be noted is that Guillen apologies are rarer than triple plays. He has always taken something of a strident pride in his candor. With Guillen, you sometimes get comments from so deep in left field, Ted Williams should be throwing them.
But he must have understood that with the subject of Castro in Miami, he had just pulled the pin out of a grenade.
“They hired me to manage the ballclub, not talk politics,” he said, back on firmer ground in logic with that quote. “I betrayed the team. I left them alone.” Right again.
He said he has apologized only twice for something he said, but he was there Tuesday because he knew his words had made the sky fall on the Marlins, just when they’re ballyhooing a fresh beginning in their new park.
“I’m not doing this for fake or my job. I have to do it because I think I do the wrong thing.
“If I don’t learn from this, then I will call myself dumb. But not yet.”
Guillen doesn’t need to be boring, nor does he need to be unemployed.
He just needs to be wiser. If there is a doublesecret probation for managerial comments, he just went on it.
“Today,” he vowed, “will be the last time this person talks about politics.”
Good idea.