Devil Ray’s outfielder Elijah Dukes, he of the alleged “You dead, dawg” threats to his wife and two kids, has a serious problem just staying out of jail and adhering to a minimum code of civilized conduct. Anger, apparently, is something to be unleashed, not managed. Five children by four women by age 22 is just one of his issues.
Any wonder he might have needed some help with that notably deferred public apology the other day? In what ironically might have been as candid an unwitting utterance as he’s ever made, he told an assemblage of media that he wanted to “apologize to the organization for sticking by me.”
Indeed. There’s plenty of guilt and embarrassment to go around. The Rays can at least be a bad team with good guys.
About an hour and a half later , the Rays’ damage-control folks had issued a written “clarification,” little more than a sappy exercise in euphemism and cliché. Unless, of course, Dukes really, really meant what the Rays said he really “meant to say”: It’s time to “move on” and “put this behind us.”
So, move on, dawg. Anywhere but here.