Since Childhood, Trouble Has Often Shadowed Elijah Dukes
By JOEY JOHNSTON
The Tampa Tribune
(c) Tampa Bay Times. Originally published May 27, 2007
It was the snapshot from another life.
On the first page of a family scrapbook, devoted to a wide-ranging athletic career, there was a photograph of 10-year-old Elijah Dukes, kneeling near the goal posts, grinning broadly, wearing the football uniform of the Rowlett Park Rams.
“He was so excited, he used to sleep in that uniform,” said Dukes’ older sister, Katrina Evans. “Look at that sweet face.”
Now that face wears a perpetual scowl.
It’s the face that inspires screaming headlines, the face featured in a gallery of police mug shots.
In some ways, it’s the new face of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a franchise that has made an art form of attracting bad news.
Once again, trouble has found Dukes, the Rays’ tempestuous 22-year-old rookie outfielder. Or is it the other way around? Last week, punctuating months of domestic rage, his estranged wife accused Dukes of threatening to kill her and their two children.
“He’s a ticking time bomb,” NiShea Gilbert Dukes said.
Who is Elijah Dukes? Mercurial man-child? Menace? The question has no easy answer. One certainty: The latest episode has generated outrage, even for fans who barely knew his name. Then there are the others, who have followed Dukes since he was a teenager, realizing that the player is capable of startling developments, on and off the field.
Either way, you can’t navigate Dukes’ complicated life without a scorecard.
He has fathered five children with four different women. He has been arrested five times since 2003. Last season alone, at Triple-A Durham, he was suspended five times, sometimes scuffling with coaches and teammates. He has undergone counseling and taken anger-management classes.
There are lulls.
Then the storm returns.
“I remember watching him on TV a few weeks back and telling my wife, ‘Well, it looks like Elijah has finally outgrown everything and settled down,'” said Jefferson High School’s Pop Cuesta, who coached Dukes as a sophomore in 2000. “But something else always seems to come up. It’s like he can’t stop himself.”
Trouble shadowed Dukes throughout his prep athletic career, when he attended four schools in four years. Twice, he was arrested for battery. He was suspended for cursing at a basketball official. In one school year, he was dismissed from his basketball, baseball and football teams. He had an altercation with a teacher, sending him to an alternative school as he toyed with expulsion.
Many coaches and teammates never figured him out. Most just stopped trying. Somehow, Dukes pushed through the system, his talent always trumping any transgressions.
He could have played Division I football, but chose baseball (and a $505,000 contract from the Rays) over a scholarship offer to North Carolina State. USA Today named Dukes as the nation’s top two-sport prep athlete.
“Elijah Dukes should be talked about as one of the greatest athletes ever to come from our area,” Hillsborough football coach Earl Garcia said. “Instead, he’s viewed like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You never know what you’re going to get.
“But I say that as somebody who never walked in his shoes.”
Traumatic Childhood
Katrina Evans, sitting in a lawn chair in the front yard of her mother’s Ybor City home, dabbed at her eyes.
“People make Elijah out to be some kind of monster,” she said. “Like he’s not even a person. That’s the part that’s so tough for our family to deal with.
“I’m not saying he hasn’t done a lot of things wrong. He has. And he needs to learn from them, not make excuses, but learn from them. He’s my brother. It has been hard. It has been hard for all of us.”
In 1992, Dukes lived with his parents, Elijah Sr. and Phyllis, and five siblings in a Miami housing project. As Hurricane Andrew approached the coast, the family fled to a relative’s nearby home.
The wind howled like a freight train. The roof shook. The place went dark. And little Elijah, panicked, had an asthma attack. No medicine. No inhaler. The family pulled him closer and prayed.
“It was awful,” Evans said. “It was a nightmare. I never cried so much. I actually wondered if Elijah was going to make it. Somehow, we all pulled through.”
The family moved to a shelter before boarding a bus out of town. Any town, really. The next big town, preferably. Somewhere up the map. They settled on Tampa.
The struggles continued, but those were the good days, when Dukes was coached by his father in Little League, when they played some catch, when all the kids needed to be home by dark – or else.
“That was our life,” Evans said. “He [Dukes Sr.] wasn’t my [birth] father, but he’s Daddy to all of us. He set the tone.”
On Sept. 30, 1995, Elijah David Dukes Sr. grabbed his gun and went looking for someone who he believed had stolen money from his wife. Outside a bar, he stalked 26-year-old Kevin Reese, a convenience-store clerk, and shot him once in the chest.
Five days later, the elder Dukes, a truck driver who had no criminal record, turned himself in, even surrendering the murder weapon to police. Family members still grapple to explain the misunderstanding, although court documents state that there was no robbery. Why did he snap? The elder Dukes actually shot a man who sold some fake crack cocaine to his wife for $100.
He pleaded guilty, then begged for mercy.
The arresting officer suggested a lighter sentence.
James Dukes, the defendant’s uncle, wrote a letter to Hillsborough Circuit Judge Robert Simms.
“If he [Dukes Sr.] isn’t at home to care for the children, to lead, guide and direct them, I’m almost certain one of them will be standing before you for sentencing … in the near future,” he wrote.
On July 12, 1996, with the charge reduced to second-degree murder, Elijah David Dukes Sr. received a 20-year prison sentence, the maximum, as family and friends sobbed in a Hillsborough County courtroom.
As he was led away, the father stopped to touch the heads of each of his children, including Elijah, who had just celebrated his 12th birthday two weeks earlier. He was hardly ready to say goodbye to the man who taught him baseball.
Finding His Way
The father, now on a work-release program at Putnam Correctional Institution in East Palatka, gets occasional visits, but his son’s athletic prowess can be enjoyed only through anecdotal evidence.
Once, the father was an accomplished athlete himself at Miami Southridge, playing linebacker alongside Winston Moss, later an All-American at the University of Miami and a second-round draft choice of the Bucs.
“Elijah Dukes [the father] was a tremendous football player,” said Don Soldinger, the Southridge coach in the early 1980s. “He was so quiet. He never once caused us any problems.
“As I remember, he had a father that really kept him in line.”
Young Elijah had to make his own way.
At first, he felt he should become man of the house, protector of the family, even though he wasn’t yet a teenager. Money was tight. Sometimes, the power was turned off. Other nights, the mother went hungry while the children scrapped over small portions of food.
As Dukes grew into his body, coaches tried to become his mentor. But as he entered high school, stability gave way to a revolving door.
Four schools, four years.
He began at Chamberlain, then transferred to King after Christmas, where he became a starter in right field, even as a 14-year-old freshman.
“I remember one scout asking me, ‘Who is that guy [Dukes]? How old is he?'” King baseball coach Jim Macaluso said. “They said Elijah already had a major-league arm.
“Right away, I learned that Elijah had a temper. We had a lot of talks. He wasn’t somebody you could holler at. If you approached him and explained what you wanted, he usually accepted it. But we didn’t have him long.”
One season.
Dukes transferred to Jefferson, where he lived with his aunt.
When the Jefferson football staff had a midseason shakeup in 1999, assistant principal K.R. Lombardia became offensive coordinator and installed the veer. Dukes shifted from tight end to running back. Almost immediately, Lombardia sensed greatness.
“He’s the best running back I ever coached, and I think the best running back I ever saw in high school ball,” said Lombardia, now an assistant principal at Sickles. “He could be a nice kid, really kind-hearted. But sometimes, he would just flip out.
“One time, I was chewing out another kid and he took it like I was getting on him. We had to calm him down. He was always on the verge of losing it, always on the edge.”
In baseball, things got worse.
“Elijah was probably the most gifted athlete I’ve ever had,” said Cuesta, the Jefferson baseball coach who worked with Fred McGriff, Tino Martinez and Luis Gonzalez.
Cuesta sighed with resignation.
“But it just didn’t work out. He wouldn’t listen.”
After one particularly blistering postgame meltdown, Cuesta said he suspended Dukes. Still, Dukes showed up for practice the next day, like nothing had happened. Cuesta sent him home.
Cuesta remembers taking Dukes to Jefferson’s field, pointing to the retired numbers of former Dragons, trying to make an impression.
“I said, ‘If you get with the program, you can be up there with the rest of them,'” Cuesta said. “Elijah said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m going to the big leagues anyway.’
“I guess he was right. You’ve got to move on. We just couldn’t reach Elijah.”
At midseason, Cuesta said Dukes was booted off the team.
And he was on the move again – to Hillsborough.
He Won’t Back Down
Garcia, the Hillsborough football coach, has a favorite memory of Dukes.
Garcia and Dukes once stood side by side before a playoff game at heavily favored Lakeland. As fans clanged a giant bell and sirens blared, the black-clad Dreadnaughts raced onto the field, through a cloud of smoke.
Dukes blankly surveyed the scene.
“Coach, is that supposed to intimidate us? It ain’t gonna work.”
Early in the second half, in a 7-7 game, Dukes went 80 yards untouched on a trap play, racing away from a Lakeland safety, the state 400-meter champion, like he was standing still. The game, effectively, was over. Hillsborough 26, Lakeland 7.
“I used to think I was playing with an NFL player,” said former Hillsborough receiver Marlon Wood, who will graduate next month from the University of Washington. “First time I saw him, we were like 13 in Little League, he was pitching against me and I kept saying, ‘Are you sure that guy is the right age?’
“I know he’s his own person. I’ve seen him have outbursts. He’s a very emotional person. He’s never going to back down from anybody or any situation.”
On or off the field.
“Elijah could play very angry, and that worked to his advantage in football,” said former Hillsborough running back Ronnie McCullough, entering his senior season as a linebacker at Bethune-Cookman College. “He’s not perfect. None of us are. But I know, no matter what’s going on here, that Elijah has a good heart.”
So who is Elijah Dukes?
The intimidating 6-foot-2, 250-pound athlete, spewing profanities at anyone who dares to question his intentions? The high school sophomore who had his pick of dates, yet chose to take his sister to a homecoming dance? The power hitter who displays uncommon discipline at the plate? Or the angry guy who keeps swinging and missing in his personal life?
The ballplayer that does as he pleases, regardless of the circumstances? Or the guy who wistfully told someone the other day that he would give up his six-figure salary if his entire family could be together again?
Eight days ago, when the Rays hosted the Florida Marlins, nearly 50 youth baseball players sponsored by Dukes were in center field. Before the game, Dukes promised them a home run. As he led off Tampa Bay’s first inning, Dukes picked on an 0-and-1 offering, launching it into the center-field bleachers.
He tapped his heart as he rounded the bases, pointing to the kids as they celebrated wildly. Even he had to smile.
The perfect picture? Not really. It was just another snapshot, this time of a man who is really still a kid, naturally exuding outward confidence, even when he’s still trying to find his way.
