Bob Cook

Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen’s mouth roars plenty when TV cameras are rolling. But if you want to know how he really feels, you need to be a reporter in the Sox dugout before the game, but after the TV cameras have been packed up. Then, in the informality of the moment, you get to hear Guillen’s often-hilarious rants about other managers, his sons, the weather, or whatever is stuck in his craw, with Guillen launching enough f-bombs to require United Nations consideration of authorizing an anti-profanity peacekeeping force.

It was in one of those pregame bull-bleep sessions that Guillen stepped over the line from hilariously profane to just profane by calling Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti a “fag.”

It’s one thing for Guillen to call Mariotti a “piece of [excrement],” as he also did in assessing his work. Mariotti, a flamethrower by trade, has ticked off pretty much every team in Chicago at some point, although his feuds with Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and TV announcer Ken Harrelson
have gotten personal over the years.

But when Guillen — or anyone else — stops shoveling the barnyard epithets in favor of racial, ethnic, or sexual slurs, that’s not just good fun anymore. Like Guillen sent a message to rookie pitcher Sean Tracey — and by extension, his teammates — by demoting him for failing his manager, baseball needed to send a message to Guillen — and by extension, all who work in Major League Baseball — by reprimanding him for failing his sport. Commissioner Bud Selig did on Thursday, announcing an undisclosed fine for Guillen and ordering the manager to take sensitivity training. Hopefully the punishment will help Ozzie get the message.

It’s not that baseball hasn’t recognized that racist, ethnic or homophobic slurs are worthy of punishment. George Carlin’s seven dirty words might not be pleasant for some to hear, but baseball has cracked down on hate speech directed at specific groups, at the least, because it’s just bad public relations, an insult to potential paying customers from those groups.

Remember that Selig suspended Atlanta pitcher John Rocker for all of spring training and the first 28 days of the 2000 regular season and fined him $20,000 for his slurs, quoted in Sports Illustrated against pretty much anyone who wasn’t a white guy from Macon, Ga. (An arbitrator cut the suspension to 14 regular-season days and a $500 fine.)

Plus, Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott was suspended for the whole 1993 season for calling her black players “million-dollar (n-bombs)” and talking up the good side of Adolf Hitler, and then in 1996 was later forced out of ownership after one more time telling the world about all the great highways and stuff Hitler built, about how “he was good at the beginning, but then went too far.”

No doubt, Selig needed to step in, what with the White Sox organization crassly and arrogantly issuing its own non-apology apology of “we’re sorry to anyone he might have offended” before Guillen essentially repeated the line before Wednesday’s home game against St. Louis.

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Part of the problem is that baseball has no NHL-style policy on suspension for racial slurs and “inflammatory” remarks. (The NHL put such a policy in place in 1999-2000, in reaction to racist taunting of the small but growing number of black players in the league.) Without a policy, it’s tough for anyone to get a feel for the level of severity — is “fag” better or worse than “n-bomb” because in this space I can write out one but not the other? — and the necessary level of punishment.

What if Guillen had used a racial slur to describe a black reporter? Does it matter whether or not Mariotti is actually gay? If it’s someone of the same ethnicity, race or sexuality, does that make a difference? (Like when Guillen last year called former White Sox and current Detroit Tigers outfielder Magglio Ordonez a “Venezuelan piece of [excrement].”)

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