The Lineup Card

Ozzie Guillen got right back to, well, being Ozzie Guillen this morning, unleashing an angry, profanity-laced tirade against Chicago radio host Mike North after he had the gall to question Guillen's decision to sit A.J. Pierzynski in place of Toby Hall, who allowed the winning run on a passed ball, by the way.

Now Ozzie's current tantrum is actually pretty entertaining and pretty harmless unless you're bothered by eff bombs. You can listen to an edited version here. It's made more entertaining by North who sounds like an extra from the classic SNL "'Da Bears" skit. Anyway, I'm not exactly breaking news here, but a friend of mine did say point blank to me that if Ozzie Guillen were Don Imus he would have been fired long ago. I think you get what the implication there is, and it got me ruminating on the topic. Would Ozzie really be fired if he was white? Does he get a free pass to say whatever he wants because he isn't?

Well, you can see where my friend is coming from on this one. While what Ozzie said today probably isn't a fireable offense, he has used very off-color language in the past, including the homosexual slur he used to refer to Chicago columnist Jay Mariotti. I think people probably do forgive some of Ozzie's colorful, or even off-color, language because there's a language barrier, and perhaps to a lesser extent because he's not college educated (at least I don't believe he is because he broke into the majors when he was 21 and he was signed by the Padres as an international free agent at 16. I also suspect members of the baseball media tend to cut him some slack because he's such a great quote. That type of bias is almost inescapable as a journalist.

Still, I don't think my friend is entirely right on the Imus-Ozzie comparison for a few reasons.

First, he's a manager, not a member of the media. That doesn't excuse him from knowing better and Ozzie's been around the block more than a few times, but he certainly gets more rope and doesn't have to be as responsible because he's not in the media.

Second, Ozzie's worst transgression was using a homosexual slur against a reporter with whom he has a long-standing feud. It's more acceptable for him to target a columnist who he has daily contact with, than an unsolicited attack Rutgers women's basketball players, with whom Don Imus had no previous relationship. Like it or not, he also used a homosexual slur, not a racist one, and that's more acceptable in American society today than overt racism. Not saying that's right, that's just the way it is.

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• #1 Comment from boisewantsjay 
  5/20/07 8:37 PM | Permalink

  Our candidate really wishes that Ozzie could put last year's unfortunate incident "behind him" in order to prevent these outbursts.
  http://boisewantsjay.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/our-candidate-is-not-here-to-talk-about-the-past/