With 6 million or so sports blogs to choose from, we all have to get a little creative now and then to keep the ladies readers pleased and coming back for more, so it doesn’t ever surprise me when another site uses a misleading headline to get a few more clicks. Hell, I do it plenty, but I also trust that enough people know not to take it too seriously, because we’re closer to the Onion than we are ESPN. And even when I get something wrong – a stupid little stat or a misspelled name or misconstrued legal jargon – I still take the time to fix or clarify it.

With that mini-rant out of the way, if someone emailed me a photo of Miami Heat stars Dwyane Wade and LeBron James wearing t-shirts that depict Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, especially in the wake of Ozzie Guillen’s admission of love, I’d probably take a few minutes to check and see if it’s real. Unfortunately, one blogger, who professes to be the “world’s most popular”, which I assume is recognized in the same category as World’s Best Kisser and No. 1 Dad, doesn’t share that philosophy and ran the above image yesterday without bothering to check if it was real, leading to some mighty fine racism in his comments section.

I make no secret that I dislike Wade and James for their perceived arrogance, but this photo jumped out at me because I immediately remembered it from an event that we featured back in September – Nickelodeon’s Worldwide Day of Play, featuring Michelle Obama, Chris Paul, Wade and James. And no, Wade and James were not wearing Castro shirts.

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Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen is currently taking a break from the team’s road trip for a pit stop in Miami to dish out a few thousand apologies for a comment he recently made to Time magazine. If you’re unfamiliar – and chances are you’re not – here’s the comment:

“I love Fidel Castro. I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that mother*cker is still here.”

People in Miami hate Castro, in case you haven’t read a history book in the past 60 years, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that anti-Castro groups are absolutely losing their sh*t over this incredibly stupid comment, and the Marlins already responded by suspending Guillen for 5 games. And the main reason I’m calling it stupid is because you shouldn’t ever say the phrase “I love Fidel Castro.” Even if the guy cures puppy AIDS, your response should still be: “That was cool, but Fidel Castro is still an assbag.”

I understand what Guillen was trying to say, but as usual he didn’t put much thought into what he was actually saying and who he was saying it to. So it didn’t take too long for the Internet to react and of course the people who didn’t get it freaked out and called for Guillen’s head and the people who did get it turned it into the joke of the day.

Daniel Tosh got it and he created #OzzieMisquotes on Twitter to mostly humorous results. I say mostly because a lot of people – A LOT – didn’t understand the joke and either took offense to the responses or made terrible jokes in response. I hate being a soap box guy here about Twitter, but whichever presidential candidate vows to clean up bad jokes on Twitter will get my vote.

That said, here are my 20 favorite #OzzieMisquotes from yesterday.

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Ozzie Guillen said some bad things. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last, but this one had a little more despot flattering than most, so it’s a big deal.

Of course, we at The Dugout believe in freedom of speech, so if Ozzie wants to say that Fidel Castro is better at skateboarding than Tony Hawk it should be his constitutional right as an American Sports Person Of Interest to do so. It should also be my right to explain why he said it in somewhat-antiquated chatroom form.

So here we are. The Ozzie Guillen Loves Fidel Castro Dugout is after the jump.

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