Big Fish

“I love Fidel Castro,” Blurts Ozzie Guillen, the new manager of the Miami Marlins, in his Jupiter, Fla., spring-training office before an early-March team workout. During a typically stream-of-consciousness Ozzie oratory, he has covered some favorite topics, such as his passion for bullfighting (“You’re giving the animal an opportunity to kill you”), disdain for sports shrinks (“You’re 4 for 4, you don’t need psychology. You’re 0 for 4, you need a f—ing guy to get you ready to play?”) and the benefits of brutal honesty (“I told my wife, ‘I don’t like the perfume you’re wearing.’ She was mad, but meanwhile, I don’t have to sleep with her every night and smell that s—“).

Now he is riffing on politics. And yes, the new jefe of the Miami baseball team, which will start playing in a sleek new stadium in the Cuban community of Little Havana on April 4, just professed his adoration of the leader reviled by his new neighbors.

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After a second of reflection, the most unfiltered figure in baseball, if not sports, wants a do-over. “I respect Fidel Castro,” says Guillen, a Venezuela native who also says he respects Hugo Chvez. “You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that mother—— is still here.”

The profane, unpredictable clubhouse raconteur whose bilingual Twitter ramblings have spawned over 200,000 cult followers now runs a club that has spawned a massive amount of indifference since joining the majors almost 20 years ago. The Florida–now rebranded Miami–Marlins played in a cavernous football stadium before a smattering of spectators and usually spent peanuts on players. That the team has won two world championships, one during a rare payroll splurge in 1997, after which former owner Wayne Huizenga gutted the team, is an affront to baseball purists. Loyal Cubbies followers have suffered more than 100 years, and that team in teal has already tasted glory? Twice?

The arrival of the mouthy Guillen–and $191 million worth of premier free agents–has made the Marlins the talk of baseball. Besides spending $10 million for Guillen, who in 2005 managed the Chicago White Sox to their first World Series win in 88 years, Miami spent big for Jose Reyes, the dynamic New York Mets leadoff hitter who won the N.L. batting title last season; Mark Buehrle, Guillen’s former ace in Chicago; and All-Star closer Heath Bell from San Diego. “New uniform, new stadium, new look, new manager,” says Bell. “We’re sexy.” (The rotund Bell, who loves his beer and bowling, is decidedly not.)

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The Marlins, now owned by art dealer Jeffrey Loria, are betting–mostly with taxpayer money–that the team’s new retractable-roof stadium can generate enough revenue to pay for top players for years. Many citizens of recession-racked Miami are outraged, though, over the public spending for the new ballpark, a palatial spaceship plunked in the middle of a poor neighborhood that will cost Miami-Dade County some $2.4 billion in debt payments over 40 years. (The Marlins were profitable in 2008 and ’09, earning a total of $33.3 million those years, according to financial statements obtained by the sports site Deadspin.) Thanks in part to the stadium controversy, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez was recalled by voters in March of last year. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the deal. “It’s a tragedy for taxpayers,” says Norman Braman, a billionaire Miami car dealer who unsuccessfully sued to stop the ballpark plan.

The Marlins apologize for nothing. “We are in business to make money,” says David Samson, the Marlins’ president and Loria’s stepson. And apparently not to risk too much of it. He points out the prior owners sold the team after failing to win a stadium deal. “Everyone could have built it with their own money. But you don’t do that.”

In sports, winning tends to quiet such political disputes. Miami is stocked with talent for a serious run. But will the Marlins warm to Guillen’s no-nonsense approach, which wore down White Sox players and management by the end of his eight-year tenure in the Windy City? “There were a fair amount of people who weren’t a fan of playing for him,” says Buehrle. “But to hear your manager say ‘You sucked last night,’ not just ‘Hey, hang in there, kid’–I kind of enjoy it.”

Ozzie is rough not just on his players. A few years ago, he told his mother, who still lives in Venezuela, to stop asking him for money. “What do you think I am, an ATM?” he said. Unlike Buehrle, Mom didn’t appreciate the tough talk. “She didn’t take it too well,” Guillen says.

He doesn’t mind if you dislike him. Just don’t assume his lifestyle is as wild as his vocabulary. “People think I’m crazy,” Guillen says. “People think that when I leave the ballpark, I go to bars, I go to the discotheque–boom, boom–they’re going to see me with my shirt off, dancing.” He stands up behind his desk and starts to shimmy. “No. I’m very, very opposite,” he says. One favorite form of entertainment: shopping with his wife at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

O.K., Ozzie, you’re a family man off the field. But you’re giving us reason to watch the Marlins? Now that’s crazy talk.

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