LITTLE LEAGUE PAYS DUKES' FINE

Quite the bizarro story out of baseball, which is prone to the occasional bizarro story.

The Washington Nationals are terrible. As of this writing, they sit at 2-11, and not much is going right.

Center fielder Elijah Dukes even managed to take a benching Saturday. Seems he showed up late for the team's game against Florida. His excuse was that he was speaking to a group of Little League players.

Since the appearance wasn't "sponsored" by the Nationals, the team fined Dukes $500. However, Dukes won't be paying that fine (via ESPN).

The Great Falls Little League, where he was speaking prior to the game, says it will pay it for him after a fundraising effort, according to the Washington Post.

"The point is, this guy gave back to our community, and now he's in a hard spot. We need to help him," said Jim Mraz, the Great Falls LL president, according to the Post. "It's not a question of whether this guy can afford the 500 bucks. We're just trying to send a message to our kids: He was here for us. Now we've got to be there for him."

This isn't about the Nationals being heartless. In fact, they have a perfectly good argument for issuing the fine.

"I think it's great [the Little League folks] feel that way," (Nationals manager Manny) Acta said yesterday. "We let Elijah know how proud we were of what he was doing, because we encourage our players to be fan-friendly in this community. But what a lot of people are misunderstanding is, this was not a team function. If this had been [set up] through the team, I think someone would have advised him not to do something like that before a day game."

The right thing would be for the Nationals to tell the Little League to keep their money. Of course, the team and Dukes could find a way to do something nice for this group at some point this season. After all, it's not like they're filling their stadium with raucous crowds.