Elijah Dukes, plotting his next good deed

Elijah Dukes has quite the rap sheet — at least three arrests for battery and one for assualt, five children from four women between 2003 and 2006 and perhaps one more from a 17-year-old foster child that was staying with his grandmother in 2007. Oh yeah, he also threatened to kill his wife and their two kids that same year. Well, after about two years of staying out of trouble, at least from a public standpoint, Dukes is back in deep — he was fined $500 by his team, the Washington Nationals, for arriving five minutes late on Saturday after signing autographs for Little Leaguers.

“It was a bizarre situation,” Nationals manager Manny Acta said after issuing the fine and benching Dukes for the day, “because he was doing something that we encourage our players to do. He was out in the community doing something for some Little League program and he just showed up late for work.”

Okay Manny Acta, you’re an idiot. Your team is bruuuuutal — we all know that — but how about laying off the power trip and rewarding a guy that’s obviously trying to change his image? So what, Dukes being five minutes late isn’t going to change the fact that the team sucks. On the subject of Acta, by the way, here’s a fun fact: He was the Mets’ third base coach in 2006, and lived in the NYC condo that airplane afficionado Cory Lidle crashed into that October. Maybe that’s why Acta is so mad…

Anyway, this story has a happy ending: The Great Falls Little League has scrounged up $500 to pay Dukes’ fine, not because he can’t afford it himself, but to send a message to the kids: “He was here for us,” league president Jim Mraz said, “Now we’ve got to be there for him.”

I guess it’s fair, if you think about it, that the kids are paying Dukes’ fine, considering how much child support he probably has to cough up every month…