DODGERS: CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR.

Byline: Steve Dilbeck Staff Writer

For those who believe heroes are required in all stories, have the Dodgers got a yarn for you.

This one is full of foreign intrigue, villainy, ingrates, greed and comic relief. Just nobody in a white hat.

Major League Baseball found the Dodgers guilty for having secret tryouts in Cuba, arranging for the defection of two players to the Dominican Republic and then signing them without offering a tryout to the other major-league teams.

Baseball granted the two players free agency on Friday and they held their first press conference Tuesday at the Beverly Hills offices of their representatives, Gus Dominguez and Steve Schneider.

By the time the one-hour affair was over, everyone's hands seemed a little dirty.

The players - Double-A first baseman Juan Carlos Diaz and Single-A outfielder Josue Perez - played the innocent victim routine, but only so well. Neither claimed they had outed the Dodgers to sign a more lucrative deal with another club.

``It's never been about money,'' Perez said. ``It's about the truth, and getting the truth out.''

Perez said this through an interpreter, who turned out to be his agent, Dominguez, who kept talking about the hardships the players had been through and all the Dodgers' broken promises.

Like many Cuban defectors, however, Diaz and Perez did not have to risk their lives on a boat to get out of the Communist country. They took a plane and were put up in the Dodgers academy in the Dominican.

The big lie that was so hard to live with? Not much of one in the end.

Pablo Peguero, a longtime Dodgers scout who now leads the Dominican academy, had female relatives act like they had been befriended by the players - supposedly helping the women get medical treatment - and then write an invitation letter that enabled the players to get a visa to the Dominican. Once there, the players never saw the women again.

Which is essentially the story they did tell people, just leaving out the part that they really didn't know the women and it had all been a scam to get them out. And that they were in on it. Yeah, that will keep you up at night.

``Once we left Cuba and got to the Dominican, everything changed,'' Perez said. ``All the promises were broken. Just because you're grateful to somebody one day, doesn't mean you have to be a slave to them the rest of your life.''

And those promises? They said the Dodgers promised to help get their families out of Cuba and did not. Perez, however, said just who in his family they'd get out never came up. Diaz said it was his mother and father, but never mentioned them again once he was in the Dominican. Diaz said he never mentioned it, either.

They could be stuck back under the oppression of Castro with no real chance of ever becoming major-leaguers, but gratitude only goes so far.

The Dodgers are hardly innocent here, either. They were overeager to tap into Cuba's talent pool, messed up, got caught and are paying a heavy price, if not in the loss of two marginal prospects, in image and publicity.

All this happened, though, under another watch. When the team was owned by Peter O'Malley and Fred Claire was the president. Which explains why these Dodgers have refused to make any public comment on the fiasco.

For the Dodgers, it was all business. In the end, for the players, too.