Hold Your Nose When Ozzie Tackles Serious Topics

CHICAGO -- Consider it society's good fortune that Ozzie Guillen, the Blizzard of Oz, commands no more intellectual respect than the Snooki girl from "Jersey Shore." Otherwise, I might worry that he's just ignorant and flammable enough to ignite a world war. He has done and said so many zany and senseless things through the years that he can't adequately address a meaningful topic.

Seems everyone always is waiting for the punch line. This week, none came.

Normally confining his low-class rip jobs to umpires and media people who don't kiss his tail, Guillen strolled out of his playpen and dared to tackle a sensitive subject: why Latin players, in his opinion, aren't accorded the same privileges in American baseball circles as Asian players. It should surprise no one that he did so insensitively, without knowing what he's talking about, particularly when he said he's the "only one" instructing Latin prospects not to use performance-enhancing drugs and that Major League Baseball isn't overly concerned about the issue. In straining to make a reckless point, the Blizzard focused on translators, wondering why Asian players are routinely provided them in their first seasons in the U.S. when, in his inaccurate view, Spanish-speaking players are not.

"Very bad. I say, why do we have Japanese interpreters and we don't have a Spanish one? I always say that. Why do they have that privilege and we don't?" said Guillen, the Venezuelan native who still, somehow, is the manager of the Chicago White Sox. "Don't take this wrong, but they take advantage of us. We bring a Japanese player and they are very good and they bring all these privileges to them. We bring a Dominican kid ... go to the minor leagues, good luck. Good luck. And it's always going to be like that. It's never going to change. But that's the way it is."