Ozzie Guillen was barred for life from Wheaton Warrenville South High after delivering a withering, explicit speech at the graduation ceremony of the school’s class of 2011. Forgoing the motivational, uplifting tone typically heard at these events, the Sox manager delivered a keynote that was part stream-of-consciousness rambling, part roast—and all delivered in his profane, heavily accented English.
“Man oh man, did you little [expletive deleted] pick the wrong time to graduate,” Guillen said in his opening remarks. “This economy is [expletive deleted]. Looking out at all you [expletive deleted] losers, I can tell most of you are going to be living at mom and dad’s for the next 10 years. For those of you lucky enough to get jobs, maybe half of you work at [expletive deleted] Popeye’s Chicken, and the other half get your [expletive deleted] blown off in Afghanistan.”
Then, Guillen’s invective turned to subjects that had been bothering him lately.
“So, Sean Penn thinks he rather live in Venezuela than the U.S., huh? I’d like to see how long Mr. Fancy Pants actor would last in the bad part of Caracas. That [expletive deleted] would get stabbed to death in the first five [expletive deleted] minutes.
“And another thing: You guys seen The Biggest Loser? I swear, the producers manage to wring a one-hour show out of a couple of [expletive deleted] minutes of meaningful footage. And people say baseball games drag on!”
The speech, which lasted about 45 minutes, finally ended when principal Sheila Johnson-Holt went up to the podium and cut Guillen off. He called her a couple of unprintable names, then stepped down.
“Needless to say, we won’t be asking Mr. Guillen back,” Johnson-Holt said, then thought about that for a few seconds. “Well, unless he wins another World Series. Then maybe we’ll reconsider.”
By Brian Summerfield
