Heath Bell Called Ozzie Guillen To Apologize, And Ozzie Accidentally Deleted The Voicemail Without Listening To It

Remember when the Marlins were a trendy playoff pick? New stadium, new manager, big payroll, etc. Maybe it's because the Red Sox exist, but people are forgetting just what an astonishing failure Miami's 2012 has been.

To recap briefly: fancy new taxpayer-funded stadium that couldn't even draw beyond the first homestand. Ozzie Guillen suspended for pro-Castro comments. Crappy Showtime reality show. Miserable clubhouse. Feuds with media. Obscene team photo. Home run kineti-sculpture.

And yesterday, Heath Bell talked some smack about his manager. From a spot on WQAM in Miami, here's the money quote:

"It's hard to respect a guy that doesn't tell you the truth or doesn't tell you face-to-face," Bell said. "There's probably reasons why."

This, as you might have guessed, quickly became A Thing. (Not because Miamians are taking sides; I think they hate each guy equally. They'd be happy locking Bell and Guillen in a room to work out their differences—and not letting them out until both have starved to death.) So today Bell met with the Miami beat writers to walk things back a little. The and you should read the whole thing. It's painful.

The news peg is probably "Bell says his words were taken out of context," but forget that. We'd like to focus on how Bell said he smoothed things over with Ozzie Guillen:

"I called him last night. I told him what I was feeling. I told him sorry for the comments."

This was not strictly true. Ironically, for a guy complaining about a lack of face-to-face communication, Bell never actually spoke with Guillen. Joe Capozzi of the Post followed up with Guillen, and Guillen revealed that he didn't even know Bell had tried to apologize.

Miami also held a closed-door meeting today. I hope, when the history of spectacularly unlikable teams that went down in flames is written, the Marlins aren't left out.