This is foot and mouth even for Miami Marlins Manager Ozzie Guillen. Saying you love Fidel in Miami is like going to an NAACP convention and saying you’re a big fan of Bull Connor. No way of telling how many thousand Marlins tickets Ozzie just unsold.

Ozzie’s charm earns him a lot of latitude. As it should. And of course the guy isn’t a geo-political thinker and probably has no clue about what he said. But this one will almost certainly cost him, and the team. There are some things Cuban-Americans in Miami — a huge fraction of the Marlins’ ticket-buying audience — just will not forgive.

Too bad Ozzie’s Castro comments were made with more clarity than most of his pronunciamentos. Ozzie is one of those guys, like Casey Stengel or Sparky Anderson, whose rhythms are fun to try to unspring. Unfortunately, this time Ozzie was crystal clear. Especially since anyone who knows Ozzie knows he’s no friend of dictators. How long would Ozzie last in Castro’s Cuba?