There's too much material in here to summarize. If you haven't already, check out the latest allegations against Elijah Dukes in the St. Petersburg Times.
About a month and a half ago, ESPN the magazine writer Amy K. Nelson wrote an article about Dukes and his troubles and actually tried to paint him as a sympathetic character. For instance:
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"'My biggest fear right now is making a way for my family and my kids,' the married father of three says. 'I just want to pave that way and make sure they never have to go through what I did growing up.'" [Note: the SP Times article reports that "the married father of three" is married, and a father, but has five kids with four different mothers (one of them his soon-to-be-ex-wife), including two born eight days apart]
"'A lot of people make these assumptions based on what they read in newspapers or what they hear,' catcher Shawn Riggans says, 'and it's just totally, totally unfair to do that. I love Elijah. He's a great guy. I'd take a bullet for him.'"
"'I think the world of Elijah; he's not a bad person at all,' says [Double-A hitting coach Mako] Oliveras, who first started working with Dukes in 2002. 'The secret of Elijah improving his behavior is that the people around him need to spend the time to get to know him and bring the good out of him.'"
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I guess his wife didn't get to spend the time to know him and bring the good out of them -- maybe that's why he called her and threatened to kill her and her kids. Maybe something good will arise out of this -- the Devil Rays will hopefully cut ties with Dukes get Jonny Gomes some more PT [as I write this, Gomes is out of the lineup in favor of Greg Norton].
