By Barry Svrluga
Tuesday, March 18, 2008


VIERA, Fla., March 17

More than four hours before an exhibition game last week, sweat poured off
Elijah Dukes's face, soaked through his red shirt. He worked alone with one
of the Washington Nationals' batting practice pitchers, drilling baseballs to
what would have been the opposite field had he not been encased in black
netting that absorbed the line drives.

It was, for Dukes, a rare moment without a teammate or coach nearby. Yet
within 10 minutes, Lenny Harris, the club's hitting coach, arrived on the
scene, jumped into the cage, and watched Dukes intently. "Get low to the
ball," Harris said. As they worked, James Williams -- a youth minister with a
military background who, four months ago, had never worked in baseball, never
met Dukes -- showed up alongside the cage, extended an index finger and
curled it inward. Come here, Elijah.

If this spring is about Dukes finding comfort -- with the Nationals, with his
life, with himself -- then here was a bit of it, in a deserted batting cage
with only those who have proven trustworthy within earshot. No player in the
brief history of the Nationals has been monitored as closely as the
23-year-old outfielder who finds himself with a chance to remake his career.
The club's hope is that it can help foster relationships in which Dukes feels
comfortable, be they with a personal mentor, a teammate, a legendary player
or a hitting coach. That, Dukes said, is reviving him even before he revives
his career.

"I can communicate now without feeling like I'm afraid to say the wrong
thing," Dukes said. "These guys here, they're willing to listen here. That's
it. When you have those ears, you feel much more relaxed. In the past, I
don't have people [who wanted] to hear. They hear what they want to hear."

Since they acquired him in a December trade with his hometown team, Tampa
Bay, the Nationals have simultaneously protected and built a support
structure for Dukes. Both he and the club are sensitive about a past marked
by a litany of transgressions -- arrests, drug use, an ugly divorce. All that
is cast against a childhood shaped by a father imprisoned for murder when
Dukes was 11.

Though they are unwilling to publicly discuss much of how they say they are
helping Dukes, it is clear the Nationals began to assemble a team of
potential advisers from the day Dukes was acquired. Members of that team hang
with Dukes in the clubhouse, help him with his hitting, talk to him about his
life. They have met his family and, in some cases, gained his trust.

"There's no one way to attack any problem," team president Stan Kasten said.
"The same goes for this."

To the extent that they were acquiring a potential problem -- and the
Nationals openly discussed the risk/reward nature of the trade when they made
it -- club officials began mulling solutions before they agreed to a deal
with Tampa Bay, which deactivated Dukes during a turbulent 2007.

When the Nationals decided to give up a Class A pitcher for Dukes, the club
flew him to Nashville, site of baseball's winter meetings. But instead of
offering a splashy introduction at the Opryland Resort, which hosted the
meetings, Kasten and General Manager Jim Bowden met him quietly at the
Nashville Airport Marriott. There, Dukes sat down with first baseman Dmitri
Young.

"I'm there for you," Young recalled telling Dukes. "I'm your support. You
come to me when you need anything, when there's anything on your mind."

Young came with his own baggage, a past that included struggles with
substance abuse, enough legal and personal issues that he was cast aside by
the Detroit Tigers in 2006 much like the Rays banished Dukes last season.
Young, 34, doesn't have his locker next to Dukes at spring training. But
Dukes recently referred to him as "my brother." The two talk, Young said,
"just sit there and talk -- about life."

"Because I've overcome stuff, now I have that as my backbone," Young said. "I
can say, 'Hey, man, I ain't squeaky clean.' That makes it easier for him to
go, 'Okay, I get it.' If there was some do-gooder that had never been in any
kind of trouble talking to him, he might not listen."

The next step to building Dukes's support structure was to get him out of
Tampa. Former Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin, now a special assistant
to Bowden, owns a piece of Champions Sports Complex, a baseball workout
center in Orlando. It became Dukes's offseason haven, a place where he could
work on his game away from the demons that seemed to find him back home.

"He listened," Larkin said. "He worked hard. He just acted like a nice young
man."

Other Nationals officials have described this side of Dukes, a polite, quiet
guy who plays with one of his children, 3-year-old Elijah Jr., after
workouts. Larkin's staff, Dukes said, made him feel welcome, and it didn't
hurt that, as he said, "I knew who [Larkin] was from jump street."

"There's a lot of people there [who are] real nice and friendly, and that
kind of helped me get out of my shell a little bit," Dukes said. "I didn't
really talk to people. [At Larkin's complex,] I could talk a little bit more,
smile more. That kind of helped me out. You know Barry. He smiles all day."

Relocating, at least temporarily, to Orlando also allowed Manager Manny Acta
to drive from his home in nearby St. Cloud to throw Dukes batting practice.
And it allowed Harris, who just completed his first stint as a hitting coach,
to travel from his home in Miami. Harris came not so much to work with Dukes
on his mechanics or his approach, and not because he played 17 seasons in the
majors himself. He came because a major league season is a six-month grind,
and the club figured it wouldn't hurt to have as many people Dukes trusted at
the park, on the road, wherever he was. He came, too, because he knows
something of Dukes's background in one of Tampa's toughest neighborhoods.

"I grew up in an area where there's a hundred Elijah Dukes," said Harris, who
spent his childhood in the Overton section of Miami. "Tough guys, guys who
mean all business, so don't get in their way and stuff like that. . . . I
seen it. I been in it. It's a different way of being raised."

To understand Dukes, those who know the situation say, people must understand
how he was raised. With his father in prison -- he was sentenced to 20 years
for shooting a man who sold his wife, Dukes's mother, what she considered
substandard crack cocaine -- Dukes was left to his mother, his siblings, an
aunt.

"I remember there just being sand in the front yard, a dog tied to a tree,"
said Pat Russo, Dukes's coach his senior year at Tampa's Hillsborough High.
"It was mayhem. There were like nine kids living in a house. Crazy."

That, then, leads to the final piece of Dukes's hope for stability with the
Nationals. The club wanted to hire someone who could work with him
one-on-one. Dana Brown, the team's scouting director, asked one of his
brothers, who had worked in security, if he knew of anybody that might fit.
Brown's brother came up with Williams.

"James, [he's] like that second . . . " Dukes said, and then hesitated over
the significance of what he was about to say. "You know what I mean? He's
like that second father that everybody needs in your life."

The Nationals' policies regarding Dukes state that Kasten, Bowden, Acta or
one of two media relations officials be present for any interviews, even
after games. Williams -- who has a background in the military as well as in
security detail, but also has served as a youth minister and worked with the
Boys & Girls Club -- doesn't speak publicly, though he has been an
unmistakable presence at spring training. That might not have been the case,
however, had he not approached Dukes in the right manner.

"It takes time with me," Dukes said. "I don't just let people come in like
that, but he earned it relatively fast because he went to the source, and
that's my family -- my mom and my sister and stuff like that. When you have
guys reach out to the family first before he comes to you, then he wants to
get to know you. That's somebody that has a plan. When he have a plan, that's
my type of guy."

Brown and Williams spent hours at the home of Dukes's mother, Phyllis,
sifting through old photos, reliving Dukes's youth. Williams traveled with
Dukes between Tampa and Orlando, trying to understand him, to get to know
him. Eventually, as the relationship developed, the Nationals hired him, gave
him a title: special assistant/player concerns.

Kasten said Williams is entrusted to work with other players as well. "James
has been very helpful, not just with Elijah but in other respects," Kasten
said. But he has spent the majority of his time at spring training with
Dukes, to the point where Dukes referred to him as "super-nanny," picking up
Elijah Jr. if need be, talking whenever he needs a lecture, guiding as is
appropriate. When Dukes strained a hamstring in a game last week, it was
Williams who breezed through the stands, relaying word to Dukes's family
members.

"A lot of teams don't do that, offer a guy as good as James to come along and
say, 'All right, I'm going to make sure he don't have to worry about the
off-field stuff,' " Dukes said. "I can recommend him to anybody. He could
probably take a lot of stress off a lot of people."

Taking the stress off could mean finding some comfort here and, eventually,
in Washington. "It's going to work out," Young said. "He wants it. He really
wants it." Yet some club officials are still wary of the potential
explosiveness of the situation, for former coaches said Dukes has a short
temper, and he has been suspended at least once in each of his professional
seasons.

"We just have to keep his eye on the prize," Young said.

That, then, is the focus -- for Young, for Harris, for Williams, for Dukes.
Sitting in front of his locker, casually assessing the structure around him,
Dukes called himself happy. He was asked when was the last time he could say
that. He thought about it.

"This time," Dukes said. "This was the first. This is it right here, where I
can say, 'All right, I'm relaxed and happy here. I was moreso quiet and in a
shell [before]. But I got a second chance. I can say that now. Start over."