A View from Left Field- Play Ball or Get Fired

It’s sad that Major League Baseball forced Ozzie Guillen, Manager of the Maimi Marlins, to lay prostrate before Miami’s Cuban community to save his job.  Unfortunately for Mr. Guillen, he voiced an opinion distasteful to ex-patriot Cubans who fled the Island when Fidel Castro came to power.  When Ozzie was the manager of the Chicago White Sox, he made the same kind of statement with nary a whimper.  Now as the field leader of the Marlins, the heat is on.

What happened to free speech in America?  It seems to be going the way of all our core values, down the drain.  Essentially, Mr. Guillen said that although he didn’t agree with Mr. Castro philosophically, he admired or loved his ability to stay alive and rule, despite the many attempts on his life.  Sure doesn’t sound subversive to me, not for an instant.  Besides, Ozzie Guillen has a right to his opinion, even if it’s unpopular.

It’s strange that a major trading partner of the United States is Red China, communist through and through.  As a matter of fact, we are currently indebted to them to the tune of trillions.  Communist China is on the verge of supplanting us as the number one economy in the world, thanks to their lopsided trade arrangements with us.  They run sweat shops and control their currency fluctuations, just to maintain a competitive edge.

On the other hand, tiny Cuba, always fearful that the 800 pound gorilla to their north is ready to pounce, gets branded an evil pariah.  Some fifty+ years ago Castro toppled Fulgencio Batista because the Island’s people were oppressed and the economy was rooted in gambling and prostitution.  Batista and his partners, the American Mafia, ran the country for an elite few at the expense of the masses.

Fidel fathered arevolution that threw the bums out and and established opportunities for all his countrymen.  Mostly it was Batista cronies that jumped ship and headed for Miami.  Today Castro provides universal education and health care, and has created a world class pharmaceutical industry in the process.  Some of its mobile medical hospitals are without peer.  When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Cuba offered first response medical assistance but George Bush, in his infinite wisdom, turned down the offer.  When you explore the cold hard facts, our Cuban neighbors aren’t exactly governed by diabolical madmen.

While Cuba is certainly not without faults, it appears more decent to its people than the Red Chinese, remember Tiananmen Square?.  Why then this disparity in the way our nation treats Cuba and Red China?  Ozzie Guillen admires Fidel Castro, primarily for his resourcefulness to stay alive, not for his political beliefs.  Let’s allow Mr. Guillen the dignity of a point of view without vilifying him, and let’s focus on reducing the inconsistencies of a foreign policy that lauds and cozies up to Red China while admonishing Cuba