In a meeting with reporters before Tuesday’s game with the Cardinals, Guillen said to reporters of columnist Jay Mariotti, “What a piece of [expletive] he is, [expletive] fag.”
Ozzie Guillen’s mouth has gotten him in hot water.
In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, the White Sox manager used a derogatory slur for a homosexual to refer to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, according to an ESPN report.
Mariotti and Guillen have had a rocky relationship.
Guillen has taken issue with Mariotti columns in the past, but a recent piece by Mariotti, critical of Guillen’s handling of recently demoted relief pitcher Sean Tracey, instigated the flare-up.
In a meeting with reporters before Tuesday’s game with the Cardinals, Guillen said to reporters, of Mariotti, “What a piece of [expletive] he is, [expletive] fag.” Tracey was allegedly instructed by Guillen to throw at Ranger slugger Hank Blalock in a game last week, and was then removed from the game, berated in the dugout, and ultimately sent down to the minors by Guillen when he did not comply.
Mariotti, responding yesterday to the remarks on Around The Horn, the ESPN program on which he is a frequent guest, said he believes the White Sox skipper deserves a suspension.
Rich Levin, a spokesman for the commissioner’s office, said that Bud Selig became aware of the situation yesterday afternoon.
“All I’m going to say at this point is that we’re going to look into it,” Levin told ESPN.com, declining to comment further.
The story became news when columnist Greg Couch, also of the SunTimes, on hand for Guillen’s outburst, wrote a column Wednesday in response, calling for Selig to suspend Guillen for his use of a “hurtful homophobic” term.
Guillen, defended his use of the term “fag” by saying this about homosexuals and the use of the word in question: “I don’t have anything against those people. In my country [Venezuela], you call someone something like that and it is not the same as it is in this country.” Guillen said that in his native Venezuela, that word is not a reference to a person’s sexuality, but to his courage.
He said he was saying that Mariotti is “not man enough to meet me and talk about [things before writing].” Scott Reifert, the White Sox’ vice president of communications, offered to apologize on behalf of the organization when approached by Couch.
“To anybody who was insulted or hurt by that comment … as an organization, we’ll certainly apologize,” Reifert told Couch.