Raúl Mondesi is a free man.
The former Dodgers outfielder had been under house arrest since a 2017 conviction for embezzlement of public funds associated with his role as mayor of his Dominican Republic hometown of San Cristobal.
A Dominican court ruled Friday that Mondesi’s original sentence of six years and nine months in prison had been satisfied by the length of house arrest. In 2017, in addition to the prison term, he was ordered to pay a $1.3 million fine for defrauding more than $6 million and was disqualified from holding public office for 10 years. Three of Mondesi’s staff members were also convicted.
Mondesi, 53, was a mercurial figure as a baseball player, a tremendous talent who invited comparisons to Roberto Clemente but was prone to emotional outbursts and rule-breaking with the Dodgers and five other teams during his 13-year career.
One of seven children raised by his mother, Martina, in a small house in San Cristobal, he vowed to buy his mother a new home after signing a one-year, $435,000 contract with the Dodgers after winning Rookie of the Year in 1994.
“My mother is like a superwoman,” she 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 homers and stealing at least 30 bases, in his six-plus seasons with the Dodgers from 1993-99. He won two Gold Gloves for his play in right field and earned a reputation early on 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 to the Dominican Republic … but I don’t know if anyone has been more popular than Raul.”
Mondesi packed dozens of bats, gloves and pairs of shoes and sent them to Dominican children each year.
“I never had anything growing up,” he said. “I played baseball and all I had was cardboard for a glove. I would have given anything to have a real glove and bat.”
“I want to help these kids. Many of them are from poor families. They can’t afford to buy 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,” she told The Times. “I’ve had to deal with this all year. I told them to change me because I don’t want to [expletive] be here. … “Fuck Davey and Malone, they're trying to put all our problems on me. They're trying to say this is all my fault.” [s—] It’s my fault. This is how you feel, it’s okay. Just get me out of here.”
Mondesi was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays that offseason and had three productive seasons before playing as a reserve for 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 people. 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 Fernández’s Dominican Liberation Party.
Mondesi jumped to the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party during his second term, where he remained until being elected mayor of San Cristobal in 2010. The former player with a primary education was chosen as the party's candidate over former major league pitcher Jose Rijo, another local hero who had returned home.
The two former players, who earned more than $100 million between them, lived in neighbouring mansions surrounded by 2.5-metre-high walls and protected by armed guards. Three years earlier, they had both been fined for rigging illegal connections in their homes that allowed them to use electricity without paying for it.
Shortly after winning the election, Mondesi allegedly engaged in questionable financial dealings. He remained in office until 2016, when he and several other party leaders were charged with “conspiracy of officials, falsification of documents, use of false documents, prevarication, embezzlement of funds and crimes of mixing in affairs incompatible with the quality of official and association of malefactors.”
Mondesi was convicted and placed under house arrest while his case was appealed, a lengthy process that was not concluded until Friday.
In 2020, authorities asked the court to send Mondesi to prison for the remainder of his sentence because he had allegedly violated the terms of house arrest. Nothing was achieved, and in 2023, the San Cristobal Court of Appeals ordered a new trial.
Despite avoiding jail time, Mondesi's precipitous decline from Dodgers darling to explosive underachiever on the field, and from local hero and mayor to convicted thief off the field, was shocking.
That was a far cry from the glowing prediction made by 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 for the rest of his life,” LaMacchia said. “His strength is close to Clemente’s and, if his instincts allow him to make the changes he needs to, he can be one of those players we’ll remember for a long, long time.”
