Guillen won't apologize for 'sexist shrine'
Yesterday, Ozzie Guillen was hammered for making an expletive-filled rant. Today, the Chicago White Sox manager is taking a hit for allowing his players to put up two, uh, anatomically correct female blow-up dolls in the locker room.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Slezak says the White Sox erected the "infantile and sexist shrine," before their Sunday game in Toronto.
Slezak writes that the shrine was "designed to help the team break out of its slump" and that the dolls are "surrounded by 'strategically placed' baseball bats" and accompanied by a sign that reads, ''You've Got To Push.''
''A few of the bats were doing naughty things,'' Sun-Times beat writer Joe Cowley wrote in his blog.
Slezak also questions whether Guillen learned anything from the sensitivity training classes he was ordered to attend in 2006 after using a gay slur.
Also unamused is the Association for Women in Sports Media, whose members work toward ensuring a non-threatening work environment for all women in sports media.
"The presence of those dolls creates an uncomfortable situation for any female journalist who enters the White Sox locker room simply trying to do her job," Jenni Carlson, the group's president, told the Sun-Times in an e-mail.
But Guillen isn't apologizing.
The manager's response to the Sun-Times was: "Everyone in the clubhouse, 100% of the people in the clubhouse, they are 18 years old and that's a private thing. If the players do it in the dugout so everyone in the public could see it, or did it in the hotel lobby . . . We did it in the clubhouse. A lot of worse things happen in the clubhouse. I don't really know why people are making it a big deal. If people got their feelings hurt because of that . . . they don't really know much about baseball." (Photo by Joe Ranze, AP)
