What happens to business when you side with Fidel Castro
In sports, Ozzie Guillen is as colourful as personalities get, having shown no ability to censor himself in his 30-odd years in baseball.
As a manager with the Chicago White Sox from 2004-2011, Guillen was routinely suspended for offside remarks and ill-timed cursing, though he was always treated with kid gloves. Oh, there goes Ozzie again – what did he say now?
But a move this offseason to become skipper of the Miami Marlins hasn’t begun so well for the outspoken Guillen, who let slip a big no-no in a recent magazine interview, confessing his admiration for longtime Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
The manager has already been suspended five games for his remarks, yet the damage stretches long past the diamond. It's threatening to derail the finances of the entire Marlins operation.
Indeed, there could be few P.R. nightmares more damning right now for the Marlins, who moved to a new stadium this year right in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana.
*Bing: What is the most expensive stadium in baseball?
In a place of scathing anti-Castro sentiment, then, Guillen’s comments to TIME magazine, who recently recorded the manager professing his “love” and respect” for the Cuban tyrant, could be a major disruption to the Marlins’ revenue streams.
Consider: the Marlins were able to swindle $479 million in taxpayer-funded bonds to finance their new stadium, which was intentionally built in Miami’s largest Cuban-American neighbourhood.
It was a conscious move, along with signing the Venezuelan Guillen to manage the team, to connect with Miami’s passionate Latin-American fan base, which – along with expectant season ticket buyers and new uniforms to give a merchandise boost – was to provide a foolproof revenue stream for years to come.
Guillen’s Castro comments, though, have threatened that right out of the gate. Though he has apologized for his remarks (“I feel like I betrayed my Latin community,” he later conceded), public boycotts have begun from angry Latin-American Marlins fans, who have already protested outside the stadium.
“It’s going to be difficult,” Arturo Marcano, a sports management expert with an interest in Latin American baseball, told the Star. “The suspension is the first step, based on protecting the economic interests of the team … It’s not just the people who go to the games. The whole economy around the stadium is run by Cuban-Americans.”
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
Posted by: Hubba Bubba | Apr 11, 2021 5:33:01 PM
Just more two-faced American Political Correctness gone awry. Nothing was ever said or done to Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, when he sponsored baseball games in Cuba and actually sat next to Fidel Castro. Probably even had brunch and a few drinks back at the "palace". Guess being chummy with Fidel isn't the same as saying you like him. The politicos of the USA are just pissed off because the CIA failed in their 3 assassination attemps of Castro. And what about reverse political correctness... why isn't anything being said about the mini-tomahawk chopping Braves fans in Atlanta and their woo-woo-woo-woo chants... or Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians... or the NFL's Washington Redskins. Why not do something about those teams and their political-incorrectness towards native Americans. Of course not... keep cow-towing to 34% of Miami's population, of which 50% are illegal and don't even have green cards. Wonder what these morons would have to say about Fidel being an honorary pallbearer at Pierre Trudeau's funeral or that the rest of the world including Canada have decent economic relations with the Cuban Communist Regime, both present AND past.
Posted by: Manuel Medina | Apr 12, 2021 1:19:25 AM
Ozzie Guillén and anybody who praises Fidel Castro is full of shit. Only the Cubans who are old enough and citizens of any other countries (65-years and older) know the kind of evil that Fidel Castro is. He order the killing of tens of thousands of Cubans just because they did not agree with his regime, including many of his closest friends, he betrayed all of them. Ozzie Guillén is not old enough to know all the atrocities that Castro did together with his brother Raoul, he should have kept his f...... muoth shut because he doesn't know f... all about castro.
Posted by: Hubba Bubba | Apr 12, 2021 6:07:03 AM
Until Castro, the U.S. was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American ambassador was the second most important man, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president. In addition, nearly all aid from the U.S. to Batista's regime was in the form of weapons assistance, which merely strengthened Batista's dictatorship and failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people. Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state – destroying every individual liberty. US aid to his regime enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. US Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista – hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend – at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people. There in a nutshell is the hypocrisy of the USA. And the majority of those older boat Cubans were Batista supporters.
Posted by: gerald | Apr 19, 2021 10:35:45 AM
so much for free speech in the good ol USA