Dave Duncan (baseball)
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David Edwin Duncan (born September 26, 1945 in Dallas, Texas) is a former Major League Baseball player and current pitching coach. He played 11 seasons as a catcher, with the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics for seven seasons, and was an important member of their 1972 World Championship team. He finished his career with the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles. With a career batting average of .214, Duncan was mainly a defensive catcher. Nevertheless, he hit 109 home runs, one for every 26.5 at bats. During his time with the Athletics, he first met Tony La Russa, then a backup infielder with the club.
Duncan began his coaching career in 1978 with Cleveland Indians. After a stint as a pitching coach for the Seattle Mariners in 1982, he joined former teammate La Russa, who was by that time managing the Chicago White Sox. Since then, they have worked together as manager and pitching coach, joining Oakland in 1985 and the St. Louis Cardinals in 1995.
Pitchers on Duncan's staffs have won Four (Lamarr Hoyt 1983, Bob Welch 1990, Dennis Eckersley 1992, and Chris Carpenter 2005) Cy Young Awards, and his staffs in general have often been considered the best in baseball. From 1988 through 1990, his Oakland pitchers had the lowest ERA in baseball, and the same has been true in recent years in St. Louis. La Russa regularly credits Duncan as being a key factor in the success of the teams he has managed over the last 25 years.
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[edit] Highlights
- Career highlights include:
- Six two-home run games as his team won all six of those games
- One five-hit game, including four singles and a home run against the Boston Red Sox (July 12, 1972)
- A pair of four-hit games, including two doubles and two singles against the New York Yankees (May 5, 1970) and four doubles against the Boston Red Sox (June 30, 1975)
- 19 three-hit games, with the most impressive being two home runs and a double against the California Angels (May 25, 1971)
- One five-RBI game, including a three-run home run, a bases loaded walk, and a RBI single against the California Angels (September 21, 1969)
- Four-time four-RBI games
- Named to the 1971 American League All-Star team
- Hit a combined .331 (44-for-133) against all-stars pitchers Bert Blyleven, Dean Chance, Tommy John, Andy Messersmith and Clyde Wright
[edit] Facts
- He is the only active pitching coach who was not a pitcher himself during his playing career.
- Duncan and his wife, Jeanine, have two sons and live in Jupiter, Florida. His oldest son Shelley was selected in the second round of the 2001 draft by the New York Yankees, and his youngest son, Chris, was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals and eventually made his major league debut in 2005.
[edit] Trivia
- At the age of 18, Duncan was the youngest player in the American League (1964).
- He was the only major league strikeout victim of California Angels right-hander Harvey Shank. {Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum -- May 16, 1970}
- On June 30, 1975, Duncan tied a major league record by hitting four consecutive doubles in one game off Boston's Luis Tiant. For the other 95 games he played the rest of the season, he hit only three doubles.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Baseball-Reference.com - career statistics and analysis
- Retrosheet
