The Baseball Thread

Guillen suspended five games

The Miami Marlins have suspended manager Ozzie Guillen for five games for comments he made
in which he expressed admiration for Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"The Marlins acknowledge the seriousness of the comments attributed to Guillen," the team said
in a prepared statement announcing the move. "The pain and suffering caused by Fidel Castro
cannot be minimized especially in a community filled with victims of the dictatorship."

Speaking in Spanish on Tuesday morning in Miami, Guillen apologized to the city, its Cuban-American
community and all Latin Americans for the comments, which were published on Time magazine's
website last week.

"I feel like I betrayed my Latin community," Guillen said, according to ESPN's translation of his
comments in Spanish. "I am here to say I am sorry with my heart in my hands and I want to say I'm
sorry to all those people who are hurt indirectly or directly."

"I'm sorry for what I said and for putting people in a position they don't need to be in. And for all
the Cuban families, I'm sorry," he said, according to ESPN's translation. "I hope that when I get out
of here, they will understand who Ozzie Guillen is. How I feel for them. And how I feel about the
Fidel Castro dictatorship. I'm here to face you, person to person. It's going to be a very difficult time
for me."

Major League Baseball was reviewing the situation, a source told ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney.

Guillen told Time magazine for an article published last week that he loves Castro and respects him
for staying in power for so long.

A Cuban-American advocacy group in Miami, Vigilia Mambisa, said it would boycott and demonstrate
against Guillen until the Marlins fire him.

After the comment was published, the Marlins subsequently issued a statement clarifying that the
organization has no respect for Castro, calling him "a brutal dictator who has caused unthinkable
pain for more than 50 years."

It's not the first time that Guillen has praised Castro publicly. In a Men's Journal interview in 2008,
Guillen was asked to name the toughest man he knows.

"Fidel Castro," he said. "He's a bull---- dictator and everybody's against him, and he still survives, has
power. Still has a country behind him. Everywhere he goes they roll out the red carpet. I don't admire
his philosophy. I admire him."

Guillen, who is from Venezuela but became a United States citizen in 2006, also praised controversial
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2005. He had appeared on the leader's radio show twice and when
asked about it, he said: "Not too many people like the president. I do."

damon hooks on with the tribe...