MLB needs to take a stand against domestic violence

	Devil Rays outfielder Elijah Dukes addresses the local media. AP

Elijah Dukes hit a home run on Wednesday. I suppose I'm expected to be happy he didn't hit a woman. Honestly, I want to know why Dukes gets to hit anything these days.

It's been a week since the St. Petersburg Times reported that the Tampa Bay rookie outfielder sent a photo of a gun to the cell phone of his estranged wife, NiShea Gilbert. She played the newspaper a voicemail message in which Dukes reportedly said, "You dead, dawg...Your kids too."

Four times before, deputies have been summoned to break up domestic disputes at the Dukes' home. Gilbert twice filed requests for protection against him. He stormed the middle school where she teaches on April 30 and it took the principal and a deputy to subdue him -- and get him away from all those middle school kids. If that is indeed Dukes talking on the voicemail (he hasn't denied it), those are his kids he's threatening.

Albert Belle, Dante Bichette, Chili Davis. Jose Canseco, Pedro Astacio, Wil Cordero, Julio Lugo and on and on it goes. There are arrests, charges, convictions and pleas. Some domestic battery, some domestic abuse, a whole lot ignored. For a decade now studies have showed us that male athletes have a greater propensity for violent behavior than men who don't play sports. Studies have also shown that male athletes are more likely to be aggressive with the women they date, and more tolerant of demeaning behavior toward women.

We've accepted that some athletes have difficulty distinguishing between the rules on the field and rules at home, and that many athletes operate under a warped set of boundaries. But why, when we get so riled up about misbehavior that affects our games (like taking steroids), are we so forgiving of misbehavior against women?

Barry Bonds is being demonized on his home run chase. Where was all this indignation 14 years ago, when Bonds was arrested for grabbing his wife around the neck, throwing her at a car and then allegedly kicking her while she was on the ground? (The charges were dropped after Bonds' wife refused to cooperate with prosecutors. The couple later divorced.) UMass professor Todd Crossett, the author of one of those pioneering studies, says it's the difference between "crimes against sport," and regular old crime. Our trust is broken by the first because the effort's no longer honest, Crossett says. And we're indifferent, he says, to the second.

Well, Dukes has a string of the second. And I'm sick of the indifference.