He’s not technically a Baltimore Oriole anymore, but when the O’s disassociate themselves from you you’re an Oriole until proven otherwise. From an AP report:

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) Former major leaguer Vladimir Guerrero said he has surrendered to police after authorities contend he attacked a police officer in a disco. Guerrero denied being part of an attack.

Police said no charges have been filed against Guerrero following the mayhem in Nizao, about 40 miles from Santo Domingo.

Maximo Baez Aybar, a spokesman for the police in the Dominican Republic, maintained Guerrero “physically attacked” police officer Renato Pena Rojas after a brawl broke out in the disco. Baez Aybar asked that Guerrero turn himself in “so the case can be put in the hands of the justice system.”

Thanks to chatroom technology we can jump to the moment of the arrest and find out exactly what happened, pending my ability to remember Spanish. Today’s Opening Days Dugout (which was originally just the above picture with FLAGGERERRO written at the bottom) is after the jump.

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The Dodgers are bankrupt, and their situation isn’t getting any better. From a report posted last night on CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball:

The Los Angeles Dodgers — who recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection — issued payroll checks to some “game day staff members” that bounced, according to TMZ.com. The website actually obtained a check for $497.54 that shows it was returned to the employee by the bank and was stamped with “refer to maker,” which means there were insufficient funds in the Dodgers’ account. The check was signed by Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and issued on June 24. TMZ notes the Dodgers said that some checks did bounce but have since been reissued.

In the meantime, Dodgers employees better not spend their money until their paycheck definitely clears.

And that brings us to today’s Dugout, which covers the bouncing checks and finds out exactly what Frank McCourt has been doing with his giant pile of burning money. It follows.

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Former UFC fighter Keith Jardine was the headliner last weekend at the mildly anticipated Nemesis MMA: Global Invasion event in the Dominican Republic, and it may go down as the worst MMA event in the history of the sport. Jardine won his match against Francisco France via unanimous decision, which is awesome for Jardine because he’d lost his previous five fights. The problem is that everyone accused Jardine of greasing himself like a Scotsman and nobody could decide if he did because there were no judges. And from there the story just gets awesome.

A pair of fighters – Paul Buentello and Eliot Marshall – said that the entire event was screwed from the start, as only a few hundred people showed up to see the fights and that spelled doom for the revenue. Not only did the event have no judges, timekeeper, medical staff (there was a guy with a bag full of Band-Aids and a water bottle) or fans, there was no money to pay the fighters. The event’s promoters told the fighters to meet them in a coffee shop on the morning after the fight to collect their paychecks. You wanna guess what happened?

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Rene Oriental and Salvador Paredes found out the hard way not to trust the neighborhood bride salesman:

A man came to his house with a proposition. Oriental was offered just under $4,000 to marry a stranger and take her to the United States on his baseball work visa. As Oriental recalls, "they tell me that that's fair … everything is fair for the American Consulate. I believe in that person. I trust in that person."

A similar thing happened to me where Oriental's part was played by a girl on the corner, I only had $40, and the mysterious stranger was an officer of the Calumet City Police Department Vice Squad.  Those charges were dropped after I was 'counselled' by the judge in closed chambers, but these young Dominicans were not so lucky:

Oriental, Paredes and numerous other minor league ballplayers were summoned back to the consulate and faced with their worst nightmare — their visas were permanently canceled and they were banned from setting foot on American soil.

Paredes cried as he recalled that day, and said in Spanish, "My blood pressure dropped. Everything, everything, crumbled, everything I thought, my plans, the major leagues and all that. I thought of my family's future and my future, everything."

So beware the next time you are solicited to participate in a sham marriage, you may go to jail or you may be deported.  Unless the chick is really hot, then totally do it. -KD