Former Ray Dukes opens up about baseball, drugs, new rap career

Fly Eli, who wants to make a name for himself as a rapper, stands in front of the microphone in the little studio off 40th Street and belts out lyrics about women and booze and clubs.

Like a lot of rappers, Fly Eli grew up hard and sings about the pain he's lived.

His dad killed a man. He's had run-ins with the law, troubles at work, six babies by four different women. Most of the millions he has made is long spent or tied up in alimony and child support.

But there is one thing Fly Eli knows first-hand that most rappers don't: The feeling that comes from sending a 90 mph fastball soaring 400 feet over a wall in front of tens of thousands of fans.

"Life is our hook," says Fly Eli, better known as Elijah Dukes to baseball fans and those who knew him when he was a hot shot athlete at Hillsborough High School in Tampa. "What we see is what you get."

In his 26 years, Dukes has seen a lot. He was drafted in the third round of the 2002 Major League Baseball draft and cashed a $500,000 signing bonus. He was going to be the Next Big Thing.

He also has lived in a shelter outside of Miami after his home was leveled by Hurricane Andrew. His dad went to prison. He has had dust-ups with players and coaches and a string of arrests, though not many convictions.

He doesn't just dwell on those well-documented tribulations. These days, he considers them topic material for his upcoming CD and for his live shows, which began this week at the Palladium in Tampa.

But there is much more Dukes wants to sing about as well.

In several interviews, including one at his home and one at the studio, Dukes talked about how the police are out to get him, the difficulties of being a black athlete in Tampa and how he was "thrown under the bus" by Major League Baseball.

Dukes - who played for the Tampa Bay Rays and Washington Nationals - says he was blackballed by baseball after he came forward last year with allegations that fellow ball players were smuggling drugs onto chartered aircraft, using drugs in hotel rooms after flights and how he would sometimes smoke marijuana before home games when he played for the Washington Nationals.

"That is why I ain't got no job right now," says Dukes.

"My girlfriend and I like to shoot targets," he says, explaining the décor.

He sits down on a chair and pulls out a plastic box full of spiral notebooks.

"I am writing all the time," he says, pulling one notebook out of the pile to show off some of his lyrics. Not all the words are appropriate for a family newspaper.

Dukes, who has never been shy about speaking his mind, had been relatively quiet since the Washington Nationals let him go less than three weeks before the start of the 2010 season. The team said the move was for "baseball reasons" and Dukes told reporters at the time, "That's part of baseball. No big deal, no hard feelings."

Even during contentious hearings over the money he owed his ex-wife, NiShea Dukes, the out-of-work ballplayer kept a public lid on his feelings.

Until a Dec. 23 car crash in which he says a police cruiser going through a red light crashed into the 2011 Monte Carlo he was driving. Dukes, who admits he didn't have a valid license at the time, says he was banged up enough to keep him out of a potential deal with a baseball club in Venezuela.

Tampa Police spokeswoman Laura McElroy acknowledges that one of its officers hit the car Dukes was driving and that the officer was disciplined as a result.

As far as Dukes' complaint that the police have been targeting him, McElroy says any blame lies squarely on his shoulders.

"Almost all of our interaction with Dukes are caused by him breaking the law," says McElroy. "If he chose to be a law-abiding citizen, he would have less reason to come in contact with police."

Records show that since 2001, Dukes has been arrested nearly two dozen times, including on domestic violence and marijuana possession charges. Most of the charges were not prosecuted or were dismissed.

After the accident, Dukes decided to open up about his well-chronicled life.

Dukes admits that he texted a picture of a gun to NiShea Dukes in 2007 and that he threatened her. But he says he never threatened her children.

There was more trouble for Dukes that year. He and his brother were pulled over by police, who found a small amount of marijuana in the car.

"I didn't get a ticket for the music, I only got a notice to appear for the little marijuana bag," says Dukes.

Dukes says he smoked marijuana before some home games while he played in Washington. He says he was feeling peer pressure from other ball players and that other baseball players smuggled drugs onto chartered flights.

"Sometimes I smoked before the home games or whatever, but only in the big leagues," he says. "I was just going along with the motions, started being myself. I was going along with it. Peer pressure. You are looking up to guys and at the same time these guys are saying, 'Hit some of this.'"

"But guys smoke," he says. "That's why they don't test for marijuana.''

Dukes says he saw other ballplayers, whom he will not name, bring drugs, including marijuana and cocaine, onto chartered flights.

"I mean, guys always did. I never did it. But I know when we get to the hotel we were smoking good so it's like we got to the hotel we were smoking good so you had to bring it. I know I saw people bring it, so it's like the rules only apply for who they want them to apply for."

The players, he says, would often smuggle the drugs in "their little man purses. I never did but but most of the guys carried their man purses, you know, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, you know."

Dukes says he told all this to Dr. Laurence Westreich, a psychiatrist who provided counseling to Dukes as part of Major League Baseball's employee assistance program.

Dukes says he told Westreich about the drugs because he was upset over having been tested for the two years following his own marijuana arrest - tests he says failed to detect that he was still smoking marijuana.

He says he was released by the Washington Nationals not long after he talked to Westreich. Dukes says the two incidents are related and that he is being "blackballed" by baseball.

"That's his policy," he says of baseball commissioner Bud Selig. "And he is going to throw people under the bus."

The Rays, the Nationals and Westreich would not comment for this story. But Major League Baseball officials say Dukes never told Westreich about players using drugs or bringing them onto airplanes.

"The allegations made by Mr. Dukes are false," stated Rob Manfred, MLB's senior vice president for labor relations and human resources, in an email to the Tribune. "Dr. Westreich did not communicate any information from his conversations with Mr. Dukes to the Nationals or any other club. Despite well reported issues surrounding Mr. Dukes, Commissioner Selig has taken no action that would have affected Mr. Dukes' ability to secure employment with a Major League Club. And, at no time did Mr. Dukes disclose to Dr. Westreich any information concerning drug use by other Major League players."

In a phone interview, Manfred said Dukes never talked to league officials about the drugs either and that if he did, his allegations would have been "taken very seriously."

"If he has information that he would like to make available to us about who is doing what, we welcome that information, and will conduct an appropriate investigation," says Manfred. "If the allegations turn out to be true there will be discipline. I have received no such information from Mr. Dukes."

After being told of Manfred's comments, Dukes says he stands by his statements.

"I already told you they would deny it," Dukes says. "They would deny and hide behind the money and the lawyers, but if I didn't express myself about the situation, I would still have a job."

Like Terry Malloy, the down-on-his-luck boxer Marlon Brando made famous in "On The Waterfront," Elijah Dukes could have been somebody, say those who know him.

"He can do anything he wants," says Michael Burgess, who knows Dukes from the Sulphur Springs neighborhood where they both grew up. "He could play football, basketball, baseball and be a star in all three if he wants. He has that God-given ability," says Burgess, himself an up-and-coming minor leaguer recently traded from the Nationals to the Cubs.

"He has the talent and he can flat out play," says Eddie Robinson Jr., who served as a mentor to Dukes and would bring him around the New York Yankees facility in Tampa where he grew up. "But he has to be the total package, the off-the-field stuff as well as the on-the-field stuff that has to be taken care."

In parts of three seasons in the majors that were interrupted by injury and off-the-field problems, Dukes never lived up to the potential indicated by his high draft pick. In 240 games with the Tampa Bay Rays and Nationals, Dukes had pedestrian numbers: a .242 batting average with 31 home runs and 123 runs batted in.

Dukes, he says, has about a half-dozen songs in various stages of production.

Britton says the honesty in Dukes' lyrics give him a shot in the business.

"He is demanding," says Britton. "You expect the real. The truth. He speaks his life and when it comes out you hear it with feeling."

Dukes says he has plenty of inspiration.

"I got songs that's gonna come about as far as the struggle I had to overcome about being a black athlete in Tampa, Florida," he says. "I think Tampa don't know how to treat athletes with the proper respect. They go after athletes like ... an athlete is almost already condemned."

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