When Ozzie Guillen stirred the pot by calling Americans indolent while protesting new immigration law
In 2010, Ozzie Guillen found himself in hot water when he called Americans lazy, calling out them for their work ethic. He further compared their lifestyle to illegal immigrants, who as per Guillen, are 'workaholics' and should have a place in the American society.
Ozzie Guillen spent almost 30 years in the MLB both, as a player and later as a manager. His first 13 seasons as a player were with the Chicago White Sox as their primary shortstop. As a White Sox legend, Guillen was invited to become manager in 2004. In his second season with the team, he led them to a 88-year drought-breaking World Series win.
Ozzie Guillen with the 2005 World Series trophy https://t.co/6jMDb0eFIc
However, he was often criticised in the media as a controversial figure throughout his stay in the MLB. Ozzie Guillen was notorious for passing comments that triggered certain communities. As a Venezuelan foreign native living in the United States, he was outspoken about the traditional American living norms.
In 2010, in an interview, while speaking about Arizona state's new law to deal with illegal immigrants, Guillen pointed out that they were needed to uphold the labour work of the country.
He termed the immigrants as "workaholics" describing them as people who are different from the natives who "want to be on the computer and send e-mails to people."
"[speaking about immigrants] And this country can't survive without them," he said. "There are a lot of people from this country who are lazy. We're not. Prove me wrong. A lot of people in this country want to be on the computer and send e-mails to people. We do the hard work. We're the ones who go out and work in the sun to make this country better."
As a senior menmber of the baseball community, where there's a lot of interaction between sets of players, coaches and managers belonging to different origins, backgrounds etc. this was regarded as a highly insensitive comment by the-then Chicago White Sox manager.
Ozzie Guillen also felt that preferential treatment was given to Asian players in MLB
Later in August 2010, after making comments about native Americans, Guillen also spoke out in public about how Asian players were treated better than their Latino counterparts. His justification of the comment was how a translator is provided to Korean or Japanese players whereas Latin players aren't provided with the same.
Regardless of his success on the pitch, Ozzie Guillen's controversal comments will always be a sense of humilation for the baseball community.