It's (Ur)bina Long Year

This blog was having trouble completing an item before deadline, so it took a request from the peanut gallery and will write about some old news, but some interesting news: Ugueth Urbina.

Urbina first made news in 1995, becoming the first major leaguer with the initials "UUU." (His middle name is Urtain). He became an All-Star with the Montreal Expos in 1998 and again with the Boston Red Sox in 2002. Last season, Urbina's mother was kidnapped by Venezuelan druglords and held for ransom. She was later rescued without ransom being paid.

This offseason, Urbina had some more excitement, as he is accused of having assaulted some of his employees. Reports of what exactly happened are varied. Either Urbina arrived at home to find his farmhands swimming in his pool without permission, or he noticed that his handgun was missing. In any case, allegedly, this called for an immediate response. So naturally, the reaction (allegedly) was to call a large group of men over to the house to round up the workers, then douse them in gasoline and paint thinner, and set them afire. All this while holding them at bay with machetes and allegedly cutting them with the machete blades.

This blog would guess that a normal reaction to catching people in one's pool is to grab one's handgun, but Urbina found his stolen, so he instead chose the next-best alternative: machetes and gasoline. Some unsubstantiated rumors say that Urbina has been known to use this type of excessive force in the past, however he has been able to pay off corrupt Venezuelan officials to keep it under wraps. This blog has no idea on the validity of that claim, given the extreme lack of corruption in Venezuela.

What this blog does know is that Ugueth Urbina, while not exactly the smartest Venezuelan in the country, is certainly among those one does not want to mess with. Because that dude could just unleash a 95-mph fastball at you.