Tag: baseball

Well, actually, no, I don’t. But, what if I did? Would that disqualify me from working in a largely Cuban community?

That’s the crux of the issue in Miami today, where the Marlins suspended their manager Ozzie Guillen for positive comments he made about the aging former dictator. Guillen is reported to have said to Time magazine:

“I love Fidel Castro … I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last sixty years but that [expletive] is still there.”

The substance of the comment is comical — it fails to take into account Castro’s actual legacy (health care for all Cubans on the one hand and death sentences for opponents on the other) and treats Castro’s survival as though he were a gang banger on some urban backstreet.

Guillen has long since given up the right to be taken seriously. He’s been hot-headed and loose-lipped and often makes little sense when he makes incendiary pronouncements. But he has the right to support Castro if he wishes, regardless of whether he manages a team that plays its games in Little Havana. Has Guillen gone too far, as Dick Shoenfield says? It’s an absurd question. No further than any other time he’s opened his mouth.

But the obscene over-reaction to Guillen shows how strong the old anti-communism still is, even as the old communism has given way to a sort of market-socialism (neither free market nor socialist) in China. In a sane world, Guillen’s comment would have gotten little play. Guillen, as I said, is not exactly the second-coming of athletes like Muhammad Ali or even Carlos Delgado, intelligent athletes who made clear their political beliefs — and who also were the victims of sports’ McCarthyist streak.

Do the Marlins have the right to suspend him? If he was speaking as Marlins’ manager, as a representative of the team, then it’s the Marlins’ call, I guess, and certainly not the press corps’ — even if I think all of them should just let Ozzie speak his mind.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Jonathan Papelbon is the game’s second-best closer. But he’s not worth $50 million over four years.

Why? Two reasons: The Phillies have other, more pressing needs, and spending big money on closers just doesn’t wash historically. The Mets learned this with Francisco Rodriguez and Billy Wagner, both of whom pitched well, but not well enough to earn $40-$45 million over four years and not well enough for the Mets to succeed. The Reds have Francisco Cordero, whom they paid $46 million over four, and they’ve lost more games than they won since he joined the team; the one winning season, 2010, saw the Reds get swept in the first round by the Phillies without Cordero even getting into a game.

And then there is the lesson of this year’s Cardinals, who cobbled together a bullpen during a miraculous end of the season and then rode the unheralded arms to a title, something they did in 2006, as well.

The lesson, to me, is not to overestimate your need for a closer and then overpay. It just doesn’t seem worth the risk.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Dave Zirin reminds us that there are some courageous celebrities — and a lot of xenophobic fans.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.