Steal Ma Gun, Taste Machete

In my quest to bring you only the best sports stories of the day (see the Chelsea celery ban) here is the sordid story of a man and his machete.

Once more famous for being the only person with the initials UUU to ever play Major League Baseball, Venezuelan relief-pitcher Ugueth Urbina has just been sentenced to 14 years in prison for exacting vengeance with a machete. From the Associated Press, via the Seattle Times:

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Former major league pitcher Ugueth Urbina was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday for the attempted murder of five workers on his family's ranch.

Urbina, a former pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies, was also found guilty of illegal deprivation of liberty and violating a prohibition against taking justice into his own hands during a dispute over a gun on Oct. 16, 2005, the Attorney General's Office said in a statement.

The 32-year-old free agent was accused of joining a group of men in attacking and injuring workers with machetes and pouring gasoline on them at his family's ranch, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Caracas.

Supposedly a party guest stole a handgun from Urbina's place, which is what the "dispute over a gun" is all about. There's also some business about Urbina catching these guys taking a dip in his pool late at night without permission. He claims he just scolded them and went off to bed. Instead of, you know, tying them up, hacking at them with a machete, pouring gasoline and lighter fluid on them, and setting them on fire. It's easy to see where he might be confused.

Here's a link to an earlier take on the story at deadspin.com, which is worth visiting for the headline alone.