Speaking with ESPN Deportes’ Enrique Rojas, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen expressed reluctance to attend his MLB-mandated sensitivity training.
“I don’t think I’ll be going, I don’t think that’ll happen,” Guillen told ESPNdeportes.com in an interview at U.S. Cellular Field on Friday. The interview was conducted in Spanish.
“I think the commissioner ordered that in order to calm things down, but, obviously, to attend one of those, I’ll have to take English lessons first,” he added.
“I’ll do what I have to do, at least when I have time, but I don’t think I’ll take those sensitivity lessons,” Guillen said.
“I want to make it clear that I left school a long time ago and that I learned English in the streets. I have three boys at school and I am too old to return to a classroom,” he said.
When asked about his comments after the game, Guillen responded with a lengthy diatribe in which he said he first needs to take English classes “to understand what they’re talking about” and threatened to “start being nasty with the media” if they continued to ask questions about that.
“It’s a really uncomfortable situation for me,” Guillen said. “I don’t need this job. It’s hard everyday. … If someone tries to play games, I’m sorry, but you’ve got the wrong guy.”
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, it isn’t difficult to find firms that offer sensitivity training in Spanish.