caulfield12

That's better. Didn't compound his mistake by walking the next batter. Outings like this might actually be better for his development than just going through it 1-2-3...he'll need it when he faces the best offensive line-ups like DET where every batter can take you yard in a heartbeat.

Uh-oh. Well, still a two run lead. Saw too many pitches there. Have to mix it up more.

Running 54 to 46% in favor of Ozzie not being fired or forced to step down.

Uva de Aragon, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, agreed that Guillen’s remarks were insensitive, but added that many people have fueled the controversy to suit their own motives. She expects it won’t take long for the firestorm to subside. Dario Moreno, a pollster who has worked for Gimenez, said the Marlins knew what they were getting when they hired Guillen, long known for his colorful personality and tendency to put his foot in his mouth. “Is what he says important? No,” Moreno said. “He’s not an expert in foreign politics. He’s controversial. He is a manager. This should be about sports.” Even Chairman Martinez, speaking to radio hosts Roberto Rodríguez Tejera and Helen Aguirre Ferré, said it might be enough to suspend Guillen if he delivers a “sincere” apology. And Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, who voted against the ballpark deal and has repeatedly criticized the Marlins, said he accepted Guillen’s apology. “I think it’s a lesson for him, and we should move on,” Regalado said. Guillen’s talk-first, think-later nature has made him one of Major League Baseball’s most intriguing — and inflammatory — characters. Guillen won the World Series as manager of the Chicago White Sox in 2005, but his tenure in the Windy City may be remembered more for what he said than what he did. Among his most notable provocations: • Using a profanity-laced gay slur while referring to a local sports columnist critical of the White Sox. Guillen later apologized to the gay community, but not the writer in question. • Speaking out against Arizona’s strict illegal immigration law in 2010. He was quoted as saying that “this country can’t survive without [immigrants]. There are a lot of people from this country who are lazy. A lot of people in this country want to be on the computer and send e-mails to people. We do the hard work.’’ • Praising Chávez and appearing on his radio show in 2005, only to deny ever speaking to him when he was introduced as the Marlins manager last fall. He has since criticized the longtime Venezuelan president. Guillen even admitted Saturday to drinking to excess after every game, claiming he’s done so for more than two decades. Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/09/2739...l#storylink=cpy

PRESS CONFERENCE 10:30 AM Tuesday at Marlins Park, Cowley, better take the red eye, this might be your last Guillen article for awhile http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/09/2739...aring-thin.html Guillen getting hammered by local Miami Herald columnist and Miami mayor. Ramirez and fellow Marlins broadcaster Yiki Quintana did not wish to speak about the situation but Ramirez said he felt Guillen was doing the right thing by returning to Miami. “Obviously it’s something that was going to affect people a lot and [Guillen] realizes that,” Ramirez said. “I think he will answer everything [in Miami].” The ripple effect reached members of the Cuban community even in Philadelphia. Phillies spanish radio announcer Rickie Ricardo, who was born in New York but whose family migrated from Cuba, said the situation was something that could be more damaging to the team’s image than anything negative on the field. “Let’s hope Ozzie addresses it and clears things up,” Ricardo said. “That’s a subject that’s untouchable. This team could go 0-50 and it wouldn’t hurt the Cuban community as much as him saying something like that.” Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/09/2739...l#storylink=cpy http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/09/2739...guillen-in.html The battle for politicians and activists in S. Florida to distance themselves from Ozzie.

I think I'd walk DeAza to face Morel. If we're 2-2 with how bad we've hit with RISP, we should consider ourselves quite lucky at this point.

No more Greg775 or Marty34 on this topic? Hmmm...I know Greg usually posts late at night or after games.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 9, 2012 -> 06:33 PM) Sale's control has been very meh so far. Probably hard to get a feel for the ball with the cold weather, that might be part of it. Strike 3 right down the middle, center cut fastball. Morel and Beckham constantly second-guessing themselves, swinging at tough sliders and then misidentifying fastballs as sliders and letting them go...or vice-versa.

Well, 4/6 outs being by strikeout against a non-strikeout pitcher isn't good, but we've got the lead, so yay!

Yet, here’s Guillen alienating the very community that the Marlins are desperate to embrace. If the Marlins don’t punish him now, when will they? Ask the Chicago White Sox, who allowed Guillen to get away with one indiscretion after another before finally deciding that the relationship needed to end. The Marlins probably had pre-written apologies ready to cut and paste the day they hired Guillen, but his remarks on Castro were beyond the pale. If he wants to get drunk at the hotel bar every night, as he told CBSSports.com, that’s his business. But Castro is a flashpoint for a community in which he has lived for 12 years. I’m not sure even what Guillen was trying to say to Time – that Castro is what, a survivor? Whatever Guillen’s point, it’s almost unthinkable that the manager of the Miami Marlins could say such a thing, particularly when he effectively acts as the spokesman for the team. I like Guillen. I worked with him when he was an analyst for FOX during the 2010 World Series. I’ve shared many a laugh with him, and yes, chuckled at his creative use of vulgarity and some of his inappropriate remarks. Guillen is non-stop energy, mostly harmless. None other than Eddie Einhorn — vice-chairman of the White Sox, the team that traded Guillen to the Marlins — pulled me aside at the opening of the Marlins’ new ballpark and said quietly, “He’s a good person.” There it comes, this time from Rosenthal. The script for the Cowley defense, book it.

And the Morel experiment is flagging. Dunn down to 2/10. But at least DeAza is fighting. BTW, Twins at 0-4 and counting.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7791970/...castro-comments http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/jon-heym...diotic-comments Heyman's comments are the strongest. The one thing Guillen got right is this: Castro is an "expletive." Other than that, this is the dumbest paragraph uttered by a major-league manager in the history of paragraphs and managers. How does one say he "loves" Castro? It's unfathomable. Castro has presided over executions, has kept political prisoners, and he's forced tens of thousands to flee their families and homeland. If anyone should know this, it's a baseball figure. If anyone else should know this, it's a Miamian. Guillen is both. http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Ozzie-G...comments-040912 I take that back. Rosenthal calling for one month suspension, expects one week. Guillen probably survives this idiocy. But maybe just barely.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Apr 9, 2012 -> 03:54 PM) oh its not a stereotype. anyone thats ever been to a miami heat game will tell you that. the whole town is all about College Football. people in miami go to things for the spectacle of it, going to a baseball game, with baseball being a slow-paced sport is probably never going to catch on in a huge way with sellouts every night. So in order to help sell tickets you have to add these gimmicks for the not-so baseball fans and also the mass amounts of european tourists that are constantly patrolling south beach. A plain jane steel ballpark with a couple of palm trees in centerfield would never cut it. They're really hoping to get Europeans (mostly soccer fans) to come to a baseball game at night when they're visiting Miami? Tough sell. Maybe the new stadium's enough, but it just depends on the affordability of the product. Turn it the other way around. If you're travelling in England, France, Spain, Italy or Germany with your family and you're American, are you likely to take them to a soccer game even if they have the most amazing facility ever built? Maybe, maybe not. But most kids everywhere in the world get bored watching soccer, just like they do with baseball. I guess it depends on the parents and how much they're willing to spend on curiosity or experiencing "American sports culture." To be fair, the whole "Come see our baseball team play baseball" approach has been a complete and utter failure in Miami. Yeah, probably better to err on the side of going too far over the top than not enough. We learned that with our own stadium, and have been correcting a Plain Jane, cookie cutter new stadium for 20+ years as result.

And there's a big difference having a swimming pool/whirlpool, fountains (like KC), that Disney-esque rock design in LF at Anaheim, smaller diamonds for kids on the concourse grounds or behind the stadiums...and making the experience 90% about non-baseball related entertainment. Yeah, The Clevelander is another revenue stream for the team and owner, but it has very little to do with baseball. In the end, all the gimmicks and aquariums and art deco "cartoonish" scoreboards aren't enough to cover up for the product on the field.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Apr 9, 2012 -> 02:42 PM) Its crazy that the posters on soxtalk are making a bigger deal about this than posters on marlinsbaseball.com. Because we lived with it for 8 years. He's still a novelty in Miami, the stadium's going to be a huge attraction and create positive buzz for at least this season and they added Reyes/Buehrle/Bell to go along with Stanton/Johnson/Ramirez so of course they're more interested in their actual team. The other part of that is that Robin Ventura is plain vanilla, so it's nice there will undoubtedly be not a single story this year about off-field distractions created by the manager.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Apr 9, 2012 -> 02:35 PM) Nice little youtube video on the Clevelander section of Marlins Park. Looks a lot better in action obviously. (Link NSFW) ! Haha. Not even Greg can defend him, anymore. That's how bad things have gotten. The only way is to change the subject/topic to half-naked babes. We'll see how things go tomorrow. They have to be scared to death that Ozzie will make things worse rather than better, and yet they know they can't control or script him. It will be interesting to see if they let him answer questions or force him to go with a teleprompter (Ozzie looks more contrite and serious with glasses on the edge of his nose) and prepared remarks by the team's media relations department, or even Loria himself will be involved in a kind of mini-rebuke.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Apr 9, 2012 -> 02:28 PM) im okay with talking strictly marlins baseball, giancarlo's good looks and topless bartenders at Marlins park if you are And that's what Marlins management wants, too, MOSTLY. Unfortunately, the headlines tomorrow in the newspaper will be 90% Guillen and 10% Marlins/Infante. That's the Ozzie Show. They knew what they were getting into with him, live by the sword, die by the sword, as they say.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Apr 9, 2012 -> 02:07 PM) The fan base isn't pissed. A certain population is. Just like how Chicago is supposedly the second largest population of polish people in the world, if a manager in chicago said something detrimental towards the polish population id be willing to bet that wrigley would still sell tickets and the white sox would do the same. Also.. great win by the marlins today! Infante :headbang Like what, that he really admired the efficiency of their death factories in Auschwitz and massive liquidation of the Jewish ghettos? It's one thing to make a joke about a "people" in terms of their ethnicity or religion (although Ozzie already had this experience with Mariotti and the gay community), it's quite another to expression admiration for someone responsible for the systematic repression and many multiple thousands of deaths that resulted from his policy. Maybe the scale isn't the same as Hitler or Stalin or Mao, but the effect is still nevertheless the same. Also, the Marlins' new ballpark is located in the heart of that aforementioned offended group. The Cubs and White Sox, not so much. The entire theme and motif of marketing campaign this year is connected to it. And then you have the fact that Ozzie's not from Cuba and doesn't understand a thing about their internal politics. He already blundered with Chavez comments in the past, and tried to hide from them by acting like he doesn't know about or care about politics. This isn't even about politics, it's about sensitivity and compassion and empathy that all human beings should have for others, especially when he's a part of that minority sub-group. Maybe he can hide behind the fact that he's not well-educated and generally is ignorant or tone-deaf on such matters. But when it starts to effect Loria's bottom line, you can bet that the lawyers are already going through that managerial contract with a fine tooth comb looking for "cause/out clauses" to get themselves off the hook. If these groups can demonstrate enough power on the social networks and with the media to make the Marlins feel there's a threat to their business model, it will be another version of the Limbaugh versus the world battle. At some point, this thread is going to run into the "SLAM" category, it's almost unavoidable. You used the Polish example. Since I'm in Asia, I'll use another. Let's say a Japanese or Korean person was managing a team in their professional leagues and he expressed the same sentiments for Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge regime in Cambodia. No matter how "cute" or innocent they sounded, would that manager have a leg to stand on? Joe Cowley has to be VERY VERY careful with his next columns on Guillen (better to take the free speech approach, that's more appealing to more Americans, the one that says Ozzie has a right to sacrifice animals for religious reasons, as per a 1993 SCOTUS decision) or he'll end up in the same boat with Ozzie paddling out to Cuba to see what it's really like in the society he expressed admiration for.

Poor Greg. That's a lot to process, then to fight back against and defend. Really wonder how Cowley can spin it to his editor. His limited brain must be turning somersaults trying to do the mental gymnastics of spinning this one in a positive light. Hopefully Cowley's g/f isn't Cuban-American or he'll have a hard time explaining himself. Nice to see him squirming a bit.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 9, 2012 -> 11:16 AM) I tweeted to him a couple of times today. I fully expect this to be blamed on KW at some point. I tweeted PETA. Between the animal sacrifice groups, Vigilia Mambisa and the anti-gay discrimination groups from Key West, they could have quite a motorcade coming to protest Ozzie directly at his press/media conference tomorrow. Don't think they'll be holding it at the Clevelander Bar.

Yeah, the Sox created an environment around him that was too supportive/lenient and now that he's in the real world, he forgot what it's like to be held accountable for his words and actions. That the White Sox didn't hold him to his post-Mariotti diversity training follow-through program, etc. Will Cowley cover the press conference tmrw in-person?

http://espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/...castro-comments Pressure is mounting, already has changed strategy from waiting until back in Miami on Friday to flying back to Miami specifically to answer ALL media questions tmrw, and invite essentially everyone in Miami to cross-examine him. "Guillen says he has lost a lot of sleep the past two nights thinking about this situation and feeling bad." The Marlins just spent 90 seconds of their own pre-game show doing more damage control. Supposedly he went to the Marlins and told them he wanted to fly back on his own during the offday but not to talk to the media, but address Miamians/Cuban-Americans directly. HAHA. It's on, Juan Pierre vs. Ozzie today. More exciting than Darvish/Ichiro to leadoff the game later tonight.

”I’ve got a real weird religion,” Guillen said. Weird? ”Santeria,” he said. It’s a bloody religion, imported from Africa. Guillen believes in animal sacrifice. Heck, if Chicago fans had known it would work like this, they might have endorsed human sacrifice. You kill animals, Ozzie? ”Back in my country [Venezuela], yes, I do,” Guillen said. He realized how this sounded and blurted, unsolicited, just in case you didn’t like it: “Too bad.” You kill with your own hands? ”I pay people to do it,” Guillen said. What kind of animals? ”Depends on what you need,” he said. And finally: ”You bleed, I’m there,” he said. http://www.spikesnstars.com/forums/index.p...ic=42872.0;wap2 http://www.cantstopthebleeding.com/santeri...ger-of-the-year

"Is it true you sacrificed an animal a couple of days ago for good luck this season as part of your religion of Santeria?" the reporter said. "I'm not answering that," Guillen said. He didn't, either. Nor did he deny it. More new. More interesting. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/26/sports/sp-santeria26 Guillen on Santeria religion (old article, but interesting)...I'm sure PETA is just waiting to join the protest Tuesday in defense of the animals being sacrificed by Pedro Cerrano. Didn't know that both Miguel Cabrera and Jose Contreras are strong followers of this religion, as well. Now that some Marlins fans have come to see Ozzie Guillen as an adversary, we need to prepare in case we find ourselves cornered by the powerful Babalao. Fortunately, at a recent Little Havana garage sale, I came a cross a wonderful research paper, ‘A Study of Divination within Santería, an Afro-Cuban Religion, as a Psychotherapeutic System’ by Lawrence J. Levy, M.S. While reading the paper, I alternately imagined myself as Guy Montag and Beldar Conehead. It was heady stuff. Literally. A core Santería belief is the following: The seat of the soul is the head, and therefore to strengthen the ‘Orisha’ that lives in the head of every human, it must be fed a mixture of grated coconut, honey, and cocoa butter. This mixture is placed on the head and then covered by a white hat or kerchief. The process is called ‘rogación de la cabeza.’ Bang, there it was, our Ozzie Guillen defense kit.

Do Cuban-Americans protest the Marlins a week into their rebirth in Miami? Should the baseball commissioner's office step in, as it did when then-Cincinnati owner Marge Schott said Hitler did some good things at first but, "went too far?" Or do you just shrug it off, as everyone did when Charles Barkley once said, "I hate white people." Barkley, like Guillen, has the rare ability to say anything and have people not get angry or offended. Guillen, however, was worried enough about these comments to call reporters into his office before the Marlins played in Cincinnati and apologize for his comments. Well, mostly apologize. Sort of. You decide. He began: "There's a statement about, it's a magazine come out, quoting me, 'I love Fidel,' '' he said. "Kind of funny (expletive). But it's not funny. I want to send a statement to the public … "I think when I was talking about that specific man, it was personal. It wasn't politic. I don't believe in politics. I come from a place (Venezuela) that has been very, very struggle in politics. I'm against the way he (Castro) treats people and the way treats his country for a long time. I'm against that 100 percent." Later, he said this: "The reason I say I admire him is because a lot of people want to get rid of this guy and they couldn't yet. It was kind of personal, not political." So he apologized for his statements and is against what Castro did politically. But he still admires him personally. Got it? sunsentinel.com/sports I would guess he was thinking in terms of retaining power, like a manager/executive/political leader are all one and the same, and being "him against the world" like Ozzie and his persecuted family was have felt the last 2-3 years in Chicago....that he admired the idea of someone holding onto power for over 50 years, when he only managed 8. By Juan C. Rodriguez / Sun Sentinel Monday, April 9, 2012 - Added 3 minutes ago CINCINNATI — Florida Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen said he approached the Marlins’ Spanish language radio broadcast team of Felo Ramirez and Yiki Quintana, and offered a personal apology for his Fidel Castro remarks. Both Quintana and Ramirez, a Hall of Fame broadcaster, are Cuban-born. Guillen did not speak directly with Gaby Sanchez, who is the son of Cuban exiles. Sanchez said he knows Guillen doesn’t admire the Cuban despot and "it’s all drama for nothing." In this week’s Time Magazine, Guillen is first quoted as saying he loved Castro and later that he respects him. Saturday, he apologized for those remarks. He plans to have another press conference when the team returns home on Friday. Will Jay Mariotti and Joe Cowley be in attendance? Will Vigilia Mambisa spark a direct confrontation in hopes of getting him fired in his first week as the manager? Stay tuned.