Ozzie Guillen Fidel Castro comments: Is it fair to suspend him? (+video)

The Cuban-American group Vigilia Mambasa, a virulently anti-Castro organization, picketed outside of Marlins Park Tuesday and plans to boycott the Marlins organization until Guillen is removed.

Guillen’s five-game unpaid suspension won’t be enough for these groups, and it’s comparatively small potatoes in a 162-game Major League Baseball regular season. If the suspension holds as-is, he’ll be back to work next Tuesday, when the Marlins host the Chicago Cubs.

There is some precedent for the MLB doling out punishment for insensitive remarks: In 1996, Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott was banned from day to day operations of the team for two years for saying in a Sports Illustrated interview that Hitler did some good things for Germany but “went too far.”

Nor is Guillen any stranger to his words getting him into trouble, though this is the first time he’s really been punished for it.

In 2006, he came under fire for calling sportswriter Jay Mariotti a homophobic slur. In 2010, he said that the MLB treated Japanese players better than Hispanic players, and that America couldn’t survive without illegal immigrants. In just the past week, Guillen suggested to a Miami radio station that he has sacrificed live animals as part of Santeria rituals, and that he regularly gets drunk after games.  

Still, his reputation around the league is as a mostly harmless firebrand – always entertaining, sometimes offensive, but essentially a good guy. 

But since the Castro remarks stand to alienate a huge swath of customers for the Marlins, damage control is essential for the club’s commercial success as well as rebuilding goodwill in the Miami community after years of little success, especially in a crowded market for professional sports teams. 

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