Sports
Ex-Dodger Raúl Mondesi free after serving 7 years under house arrest for embezzling millions
Raúl Mondesi is a free man.
The former Dodgers outfielder had been on house arrest since a 2017 conviction for embezzlement of public funds associated with his role as mayor of his Dominican Republic hometown, San Cristóbal.
A Dominican court ruled Friday that Mondesi’s original sentence of six years, nine months in prison had been satisfied by the duration of the house arrest. In 2017, in addition to the prison sentence, he was ordered to pay a $1.3 million fine for defrauding more than $6 million and was barred from holding public office for 10 years. Three of Mondesi’s staff members also were sentenced.
Mondesi, 53, was a mercurial figure as a ballplayer, a tremendous talent who invited comparisons to Roberto Clemente but who was prone to emotional outbursts and flouting rules with the Dodgers and five other teams during his 13-year career.
One of seven children raised by his mother, Martina, in a tiny home in San Cristóbal, he vowed to buy a new house for his mother after signing a one-year, $435,000 contract with the Dodgers after winning the Rookie of the Year award in 1994.
“My mother, she’s like superwoman,” he told The Times. “I can’t tell you what she means to me. My father died when I was 7, and she had to do everything. She worked in a laundry just to put food on the table.”
Mondesi twice joined the elite 30-30 club — hitting at least 30 home runs and stealing at least 30 bases — in his six-plus seasons with the Dodgers from 1993 to 1999. He won two Gold Gloves for his play in right field and early on earned a reputation as a hard worker.
He also enjoyed immense popularity in the Dominican Republic.
“He’s a hero in our country, a genuine hero,” Dodgers shortstop and countryman Jose Offerman said in 1995. “We’ve had a lot of players come through the Dominican … but I don’t know if anyone’s been more popular than Raúl.”
Mondesi would pack dozens of bats, gloves, and pairs of shoes and send them to Dominican kids each year.
“I never had anything when I grew up,” he said. “I’d play baseball, and all I’d have is cardboard for a glove. I would have given anything to have a real glove and bat.
“I want to help those kids. A lot of them are poor families. They can’t afford baseball equipment, so I help them.”
Four years later, however, Mondesi was a disgruntled powder keg who demanded a trade in a profanity-laced tirade against Dodgers manager Davey Johnson and general manager Kevin Malone in August 1999.
“I can’t take this anymore,” he told The Times. “I’ve had to deal with this all year. I told them to trade me because I don’t want to [expletive] be here. … “F— Davey and f— Malone, they try to put all of our problems on me. They’re trying to say that all this [s—] is my fault. That’s the way they feel, fine. Just get me out of here.”
Mondesi was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays that offseason and had three productive seasons before bouncing around as a reserve with four teams — including an eight-game stint with the Angels in 2004 — and retiring in 2005.
He earned $66.5 million during his career and returned to San Cristóbal, a dusty, overcrowded and impoverished city of 700,000. He expressed an interest in politics, and in 2006 was elected to the Chamber of Deputies — the Dominican equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives — as a member of President Leonel Fernandez’s Dominican Liberation Party.
Mondesi jumped to the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party during his second term, where he remained when elected mayor of San Cristóbal in 2010. The former player with a grade-school education was chosen as the party’s candidate over former major league pitcher José Rijo, another local hero who had returned home.
The two former players who earned more than $100 million between them lived in neighboring mansions, surrounded by 8-foot walls and protected by armed guards. Three years earlier, both were fined for rigging illegal connections to their homes that allowed them to use electricity without paying for it.
Soon after winning the election, Mondesi allegedly became engaged in questionable financial transactions. He served through 2016, when he and several other party leaders were charged with “conspiracy of officials, falsification of documents, use of false documents, prevarication, embezzlement, and crimes of mixing in affairs incompatible with the quality of official and association of criminals.”
Mondesi was convicted and put under house arrest while his case was appealed, a slow process that did not conclude until Friday.
In 2020, authorities petitioned the court to send Mondesi to prison for the remainder of his sentence because he was alleged to have violated the terms of the house arrest. Nothing came of it, and in 2023, the Court of Appeals of San Cristóbal ordered a new trial.
Despite avoiding jail, Mondesi’s precipitous decline from Dodgers darling to an explosive under-performer on the field, and from hometown hero and mayor to convicted thief off the field, was shocking.
It was a far cry from the glowing prediction from Al LaMacchia, the Blue Jays vice president of baseball operations, after Mondesi was acquired from the Dodgers 25 years ago.
“He won’t have to worry about money the rest of his life,” LaMacchia said. “His strength is close to Clemente, and if his instincts allow him to make the changes that he needs to make, he may be one of those that you remember for a long, long time.”
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This year’s NBA Finals is a rematch of the last time the Knicks made it to the championship series, way back at the conclusion of the 1998-99 season.
In that Finals, the Spurs defeated the Knicks in five games. Now, New York gets a shot to get its lick back, nearly 30 years later.
Regardless, whichever team wins this series will need huge performances from its star players.
Let’s check out the odds for NBA Finals MVP as of June 8 at FanDuel Sportsbook.
This page may contain affiliate links to legal sports betting partners. If you sign up or place a wager, FOX Sports may be compensated. Read more about Sports Betting on FOX Sports.
2025-26 NBA Finals MVP
Jalen Brunson: +115 (bet $10 to win $21.50 total)
Karl-Anthony Towns: +165 (bet $10 to win $26.50 total)
Victor Wembanyama: +380 (bet $10 to win $48 total)
Before the Finals began, anyone not named Wembanyama or Brunson didn’t appear to have much of a chance at this award, at least according to the early odds.
However, now that New York is up 2-0, its second star, Karl-Anthony Towns, has crashed the party.
Towns has moved to second on the board after playing Wemby to a standstill through two games. In Game 2, KAT had 21 points (8-for-12 shooting), 13 rebounds and four assists. The Knicks won by one.
Brunson put up 20 points in Game 2, but was 7-for-25 from the field. He also had four turnovers.
Wembanyama finished Game 1 with 26 points, 12 rebounds and three blocks. In Game 2, he had 29 points, nine rebounds and four blocks.
Sports
Commentary: She broke baseball’s glass ceiling. Now Kim Ng is taking softball to the next level
There’s no crying in baseball, but Kim Ng works in softball now. And as commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, the former Dodgers assistant general manager has been fielding lots of tearful feedback from fans overcome by the fact that softball players finally, finally have a big league of their own.
“I can’t even tell you the number of people that have approached me, just openly sobbing with happiness,” she said. “It’s been incredible, experiencing all of that and understanding how long people have been waiting for something like this.”
It really is like that. Ask Lisa Fernandez, softball pioneer and total boss: “I’ll be watching and get emotional, just looking at how far this game has come.”
With MLB backing the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, or AUSL, for a second season and Ng back to steer it, sustainable professional softball is starting to feel real.
Former UCLA pitcher Rachel Garcia plays for Athletes Unlimited Team McQuillin.
(Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
Fernandez remembers when it was a huge deal to get one softball game on TV, and now ESPN will broadcast 50 AUSL games and ABC will carry the championship. And after last year’s four-team 10-city barnstorming tour, the league will add two teams and anchor itself to locations in North Carolina, Illinois, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Utah.
The ball gets rolling on Tuesday, just days after the conclusion of the Women’s College World Series — which last season averaged a record 1.3 million viewers on ESPN, including pulling 3.9 million for UCLA’s thriller against Tennessee.
Big steps, baby steps. All going the right direction.
“I would hope that we are the major league baseball of softball,” Ng, 57, said in a phone conversation. “That is a good number of teams, spread out across the country, with a huge following, all of our games televised.
“That’s the goal. To be the MLB of softball.”
Ng spent more than 30 years in the MLB, including a decade-long stint with the Dodgers. She was also the first woman to serve as a big-league general manager, leading the Miami Marlins from 2020 through the 2023 season. She declined her option after the team made its first full-season playoff appearance in two decades and then announced plans to introduce a president of baseball operations position that would’ve siphoned away some of her say-so.
Miami Marlins general manger Kim Ng, left, sits in a golf cart and talks with manager Marlins Skip Schumaker during a 2023 spring training workout.
(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)
“Breaking that glass ceiling, that’s special to me,” Ng said. “But I think in a different way, this [work with the AUSL] is for sure one of the more meaningful things I’ve done.”
She said a former MLB colleague recently asked her about the AUSL: “I said, ‘I’m working for the women now.’”
The former co-worker corrected her: “You were always working for the women.’”
Before that, as a kid, she was a softball infielder in Long Island and then at the University of Chicago. “I was scrappy,” Ng said, “which is definitely how I describe my personality and the way I approach most things in life.”
It’s served her well. And now it’s serving softball, a sport that for decades has been among the most popular for girls in America, even without long-term playing prospects or pro players to strive to emulate.
Compare it with basketball: About three-quarters of the WNBA’s current players have never even lived in a world without an established professional women’s basketball league in America.
UCLA star hitter Megan Grant will play in the Athletes Unlimited softball league after wrapping up her record-setting college career.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The NBA-backed WNBA is celebrating its 30th season this summer with a lucrative new CBA and 15 teams, two of them expansion franchises, including one in Canada, and the Bay Area-based Golden State Valkyries valued at $850 million.
The AUSL is about to embark on Year 2.
There have been attempts to start up professional softball leagues before. Those weren’t just long shots, more like Megan Grant moonshots.
But now we have Bryanna Lopez, a 12-year-old catcher from Alhambra, sitting in the Easton Stadium stands at UCLA, watching her heroes play and telling me, without hesitation: “I want to play professional softball. It’s a really big dream.”
And a really big deal.
For players and a growing audience of folks like Kaitlyn Laabs, the superfan in a chef’s hat at UCLA games, who want to watch the home run queen Grant continue to mash. To see her teammates Jordan Woolery keep flaunting her flashy slash line and Taylor Tinsley sharpening her wicked arsenal of pitches.
UCLA starting pitcher Taylor Tinsley and first baseman Jordan Woolery are poised to start their professional softball careers this week.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“A lot of times, seniors come in their last year thinking it’s the end of their career, and that puts a lot more pressure,” UCLA’s Woolery said earlier this month, before the Bruins advanced to the Women’s College World Series for the third straight season. “So, for me, Megan, Tins, [the AUSL] opens us up a little bit to play free, knowing it’s not the end of the road.”
Ng’s presence, first as an adviser and starting last season as commissioner, is helping legitimize the new league.
“She’s the right person at the right time,” said Fernandez, the UCLA associate head coach, who is also the general manager of the defending champion Utah Talons. “Knowing Kim’s background in baseball, having her know the business of how to run a league, a no-brainer for me.”
Ng’s team-building acumen is helping her coach up first-time general managers. Her experience at MLB’s league office, working to grow the game internationally, ensures she’ll be patient, methodical — which is to say, the AUSL is not rushing to join the Sparks and the National Women’s Soccer League’s Angel City FC in the complicated, competitive L.A. market until it’s good and ready.
“Softball just has had its ups and downs in terms of creating a solid foundation,” Ng said. “Why has it taken so long? It’s hard to say, but obviously the revenue is a huge piece of it. Now, with MLB as a major investor, they’re understanding of the idea that we’re complementary.”
MLB has invested a reported $10 million in the AUSL — in addition to offering its massive promotional platform. So after Grant hit an NCAA record-extending 39th home run, the No. 4 overall pick was interviewed by Harold Reynolds on “MLB Tonight.”
Beside Grant, who is bound for the Portland Cascade, there will be 12 other former Bruins sprinkled among the league’s six rosters. Woolery and Tinsley will team up with a few other former Bruins on the Talons.
“You’d lose a generation of players if the growth is capped,” said Laabs, the softball fan. “But right now, softball is on a rocket ship. Let’s keep on cooking, let’s keep on flying, let’s show that if you build it, they will come.”
Sports
Ketel Marte frustrating Diamondbacks by opting to take days off with trade deadline looming: report
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Arizona Diamondbacks All-Star second baseman Ketel Marte has reportedly been frustrating people within the organization with the MLB trade deadline looming.
Marte, a switch-hitter with power from both sides of the plate, is someone Arizona has tried to trade this past winter despite his talent and six-year extension that kicked in this season.
But USA TODAY reported Marte “continues to frustrate segments of the organization by opting to take days off.” Most recently, Marte decided to sit for last week’s game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, where superstar Shohei Ohtani was pitching, and he then proceeded to hit a walk-off home run the next day for the D-Backs.
Ketel Marte of the Arizona Diamondbacks looks on before the game against the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington, on May 30, 2026. (Maddy Grassy/Getty Images)
The reason for Marte missing the game last Wednesday was a mixture of his decision as well as the second baseman dealing with lower-back and hamstring ailments, per Arizona Sports. Marte didn’t want to risk any further injury.
“We’re all human, and we all need a day here and there,” Marte said through a translator following the walk-off homer he hit on Thursday’s game.
KETEL MARTE RECEIVES STANDING OVATION FROM DIAMONDBACKS FANS IN FIRST HOME GAME SINCE CONTROVERSIAL HECKLING
This also isn’t new for Marte, who created some tension in the clubhouse due to absences and off-day requests near the All-Star break. It was reported that Marte’s teammates didn’t appreciate trying to time his off-days, leading to an apology later on.
Ketel Marte of the Arizona Diamondbacks bats during the first inning against the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington, on May 30, 2026. (Maddy Grassy/Getty Images)
With Marte being involved in trade rumors in the past, they will certainly pick up with MLB’s trade deadline scheduled for Aug. 3 this year. It’s later than usual, but with teams dealing with injuries as well as trying to bolster their lineups, rotations and bullpens, players with Marte’s talent will surely lead to calls to those in the Arizona front office.
Marte should be sold at a high price, if at all, given he is under contract through the 2030 campaign at a relatively low price after signing his six-year, $116.5 million contract. He also has a player option for the 2031 season, where he will be age 37.
While second base is his usual spot on the field, Marte has played shortstop as well as center field in his 12-year career. The Dominican Republic product has earned three All-Star nods, including each of the past two seasons.
Ketel Marte of the Arizona Diamondbacks celebrates after hitting a two-run home run against the Colorado Rockies during the fourth inning at Chase Field in Phoenix, Ariz., on May 23, 2026. (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
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This year, Marte is slashing .250/.304/.450 with a .754 OPS — the lowest mark since his 2022 campaign in Arizona (.727). He has hit 11 homers, driven in 37 runs and scored 37 times across 60 games.
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