Season 2 of “The Franchise†on Showtime debuted last Wednesday . The show is following the Miami Marlins this season after covering the San Francisco Giants last year. Their choice to follow the Marlins was an excellent one; the team just moved into a new park, rebranded, got new colors and uniforms, and signed a bunch of high-priced free agents in the offseason. Oh yeah, and they also signed the game’s most colorful manager — Ozzie Guillen.  Read more after the jump.
It didn’t take long for Guillen to make his presence felt on the show.
The speech Ozzie delivered to his team before their first game of the season was about as profanity-laced as it gets. The cuss words he used have not been edited out to preserve the authenticity of his speech.
“Every fucking day we want people to hate this fucking ball club … because the manager is a fucking big mouth. He’s arrogant, he’s cocky, whatever it is — I want them to fucking hate us. Because when people hate somebody, it’s because they’re fucking good. Good teams win a lot of games. Horseshit teams, they have a lot of meetings. Hopefully the next meeting we have for you guys is going to be in the All-Star break and fucking the first game of the playoffs.
“Good luck, let’s take (?). And everybody on this fucking stay together. Let’s go kick some ass.â€
Inspiring stuff, no doubt. The best part was when the cameras flashed to new Marlin Jose Reyes who couldn’t help but laugh about one sentence and two f-bombs into the speech. Of course Guillen’s tune changed quickly when he was grilled for his moronic, insensitive, and downright idiotic comments about Fidel Castro. In hindsight, he’s lucky he still has a job.
After focusing on setting up the season, and then Guillen’s controversy, the show began focusing on some main figures from the team: Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Reyes (and his return to New York), Heath Bell, Carlos Zambrano, and the acquisition of Carlos Lee. The editing and commentary was excellent, and the show was very enjoyable.
