Dave Duncan (baseball)
Encyclopedia : D : DA : DAV : Dave Duncan (baseball)
David Edwin Duncan (born September 26, 1945 in Dallas, Texas) is a retired baseball player and current pitching coach. He played 11 seasons as a catcher, with the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics for 7 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. (He did, however, 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 the Cleveland Indians. After a stint as pitching coach for the Seattle Mariners in 1982, Duncan joined former teammate La Russa, who was by that time manager of the Chicago White Sox.
They have worked together as manager and pitching coach since then, joining the Oakland Athletics in 1985 and the St. Louis Cardinals on October 23, 1995. Pitchers on Duncan's staffs have won three 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.
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 son, Chris Duncan was drafted by the Cardinals organization and eventually made his major league debut on September 10, 2005. His oldest son Shelley was drafted in the 2nd round of the 2001 draft by the New York Yankees as an outfielder.
Career highlights include:
- six 2-home run games...his team won all six of those games
- one 5-hit game...4 singles and a home run vs. the Boston Red Sox (July 12, 1972)
- a pair of 4-hit games...two doubles and two singles vs. the New York Yankees (May 5, 1970) and four doubles vs. the Boston Red Sox (June 30, 1975)
- nineteen 3-hit games, with the most impressive being two home runs and a double vs. the California Angels (May 25, 1971)
- one 5-RBI game...a 3-run home run, a bases-loaded walk, and an RBI single vs. the California Angels (September 21, 1969)
- four 4-RBI games
- named to the 1971 American League All-Star team
- hit a combined .331 (44-for-133) against All-Stars Bert Blyleven, Dean Chance, Tommy John, Andy Messersmith, and Clyde Wright
Trivia
- At the age of 18, Duncan was the youngest player in the American League in 1964.
- On June 30, 1975, Duncan tied a Major League record by hitting four consecutive doubles in one game. For the other 95 games he played in 1975, he hit only three doubles. (All four doubles were hit against All-Star Luis Tiant of the Boston Red Sox.)
External links
- [Baseball-Reference.com] - career statistics and analysis
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.