A Natural : Duncan Arrives Ahead of Schedule, in Nick of Time

When Bill Russell, the starting Dodger shortstop of the last dozen seasons, watches 22-year-old rookie Mariano Duncan play that position now, he sees more than just his successor. When he watches Duncan, Russell sees something he never was.

“He makes it look so easy,” Russell said. “So much natural ability. It wasn’t as easy for me.”

He laughed. “It still isn’t as easy. You look out there, and he has all the ingredients.”

When Bobby Grich of the Angels slid into Steve Sax during the freeway series last April and injured a muscle in Sax’s lower leg, the Dodgers thought they’d lost a second baseman. Instead, they gained a shortstop.

They moved Russell to second and summoned Duncan, who became the first player in the National League to hit double figures in errors this season, but has played so well since that third baseman Enos Cabell predicts he could be the Dodger shortstop for the next 15 years.

The line of succession of Dodger shortstops in the last 40 years is a venerable one, from Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese through Maury Wills to Russell. Now there is Duncan, a native of San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic, home not only to teammate Pedro Guerrero but breeding ground of big league shortstops--Rafael Ramirez of the Atlanta Braves, Tony Fernandez of the Toronto Blue Jays, Alfredo Griffin of the Oakland A’s, among others.

But when the Dodgers talk of Duncan, their shortstop of four months, they’re already comparing him to another

shortstop--the wizard himself, Ozzie Smith of the St. Louis Cardinals.

“He has all the Ozzie Smith ingredients,” Russell said. “Good hands and he’s quick, and he’s bigger and stronger than Ozzie.

“Do I get carried away with him? Maybe, but he makes you get carried away.”

Monty Basgall, the Dodgers’ 62-year-old infield coach who is lavish with praise about as often as Manager Tom Lasorda is left speechless, doesn’t hesitate to make the same comparison.

After watching Duncan range yards beyond second base to get a ground ball, execute a 360-degree turn and throw out a runner, a play Duncan has made several times this season, Basgall said: “Ozzie couldn’t have made that play. Mariano has a better arm than Ozzie and he can outrun Ozzie.

“He’s not in Ozzie’s class yet, but he’s got a chance to be there. He’s got a chance to be in anybody’s class.”

On the Dodgers’ last visit to the land of Oz, the wizard was asked what he thought of this new pretender.

Smith said: “He’s made some super plays, but I’ve always felt that time is the greatest indicator of how good a player is, his degree of consistency.”

In other words, come back after four years instead of four months, and we’ll talk about it again.

And what does Duncan say when the comparison is made? He smiles and says thank you.

“I’ve never seen a shortstop like Ozzie,” Duncan said. “He catches everything so easy.

“When Manny Mota told me, ‘You’re better than Ozzie Smith,’ I said, ‘Oh, Manny, thank you,’ but I don’t go out and try to play like Ozzie Smith. I can only play like Mariano Duncan.”

That suits the Dodgers just fine, thank you.

Twice a month, after he gets his paycheck from the Dodgers, Mariano Duncan sends $300 home to his family: his mother, Nilda; his father, Enrique; six brothers and three sisters.

“A big family, yes,” Duncan said, while sitting in the stands one afternoon before a game at Dodger Stadium. “But it’s good to have. We’re a very happy family.

“Three hundred dollars, that’s about 900 pesos in the Dominican, which is almost like $2 million here, really.”

Duncan was 17 when Dodger scout Ralph Avila signed him to a $3,500 contract. He had been playing organized ball for only three years, and that was in the face of opposition from his father.

“He wanted me to be a student,” Duncan said. “I told him, ‘I don’t want to be a student.’ I stopped going to school when I was 15. I forgot about school and concentrated on baseball.”

But even after Avila and another Dodger scout, Elvio Jiminez, became regular visitors to the Duncan home, trying to persuade Duncan’s family of his future prospects as a big leaguer, there was resistance.

“My mother hated it very much,” Duncan said. “She loves me very much. For me to go to the United States--oh my God.”

Duncan was 19 when he left home for his first Dodger training camp. His first season, he was assigned to Lethbridge, where the Dodgers had a Class-A team. Lethbridge is in Alberta, a western province of Canada where Spanish is spoken about as often as Swahili is in Bel-Air. Duncan spoke no English.

“That’s very hard,” said Atlanta shortstop Ramirez, whose family lived virtually next door to Duncan’s before he, too, left to become a stranger in a strange land.

“For me, I felt sorry for myself. I never had learned English, and when I came to the States I was embarrassed. I couldn’t ask about food. I ate the same food almost every day, Coca-Cola and hamburgers.”

Another Dominican player, A’s pitcher Jose Rijo, was 15 when he signed with the Yankees in 1981.

“For the first two years, I cried every day,” Rijo said in an article in Baseball America. “Twice I asked the Yankees for my release. They said no, and told me I was just homesick.”

The experience was not quite as traumatic for Duncan. Several Dodger instructors and scouts were Latin, and he also made an immediate impression in camp.

“My first game in spring training, I’ll never forget,” he said. “I had three hits, including a double and a triple--and stole two bases.”

Nonetheless, the pull of home remained strong.

“When I called home, I said, ‘Mom, I tell you something, I miss my home very much,’ ” he said.

“She told me, ‘There isn’t anything for you to do here in the Dominican. Forget everything about here.’ ”

When Duncan joined the Dodgers, he was a center fielder and his idol was Cesar Cedeno, another product of San Pedro de Macoris now playing for the Reds.

“I loved center field,” Duncan said. “Every time a runner was on second base and there was a base hit, I’d throw him out at the plate.”

The Dodgers, however, as they have done with so many players, switched Duncan to another position, second base. Enthralled with his speed--he led the Florida State League with 56 stolen bases in 1983 and had 41 in 54 attempts for Double-A San Antonio last season--the Dodgers also worked on making him a switch-hitter.

Mike Brito, the Dodger scout responsible for the signing of Fernando Valenzuela, managed Duncan on a Colombian winter-league team in 1983.

“The press and the owners wanted to get rid of him because he struck out so many times,” Brito said. “But I told them, ‘You have to be patient with this kid.’

“A month later, Mariano started making contact, and he stole a lot of bases, and he was like an idol. A nice kid to manage. I love him.”

Brito also played Duncan a few games at short and liked what he saw.

“I told (Al) Campanis, ‘Mariano can play shortstop. He’s got a good arm, good range, and real soft hands.’ ”

Duncan said that Lasorda approached him during spring training in 1983. “He told me, ‘Mariano, I need you to play shortstop. Bill Russell is an old man right now and Sax (the incumbent second baseman) is a young man.’ ”

But the Dodgers had another highly regarded prospect at short--Dave Anderson, who had hit .343 in Albuquerque in 1982 and was voted the most likely to succeed in the Pacific Coast League that season. Anderson was called up as Russell’s backup and soon-to-be heir, so Duncan remained a second baseman.

Duncan hit .253 at San Antonio last season, but even then Campanis was telling anyone who would listen that the best infielder in the organization was playing Double-A ball.

When the Dodgers broke camp this spring, Duncan was assigned to Albuquerque. But then Sax was hurt, and the night before the season opened in Houston, Duncan received the summons from the big club.

“I thought it was one of my friends calling me up, joking with me,” Duncan said. “I couldn’t believe I was going to the major leagues.”

He didn’t expect to stay long. For that matter, no one else really expected him to either, and he didn’t help his cause a bit when he made an error in his debut, costing the Dodgers the game.

But in the next two games against the Astros, Duncan had four hits and stole a base, made all the plays afield, and gave the Dodgers raw speed at the top of their lineup, the likes of which they hadn’t seen since Willie Davis. Three times this season, Duncan has bunted for doubles, and Lasorda predicts that some day Duncan will lay one down and get a triple out of it.

Still, when Sax came back, Duncan went to the bench and figured it would be only a matter of time until he was sent down.

But then Sax hurt himself again stepping away from a pitch, Duncan was put back in the lineup and hit his first big league home run, against Joe Niekro. And when Anderson went down later that same week with a recurrence of the back problems that have plagued him the last three years, it was decided to play Duncan full time at short.

As it turned out, Anderson was the one sent down, and when he came back, it was as a third baseman.

“Tommy Lasorda talked to Manny Mota and Pedro Guerrero and said, ‘Tell Mariano I want him to play shortstop,’ ” Duncan said.

“The first three weeks, I made a lot of errors, but Monty Basgall worked very hard with me and talked with me, told me it would take some time.

“Those first three weeks, I felt lost, but right now I don’t want to go back to second base. I love shortstop. I love it.”

Duncan needn’t worry about being switched back. That’s about as likely as Guerrero returning to third base from the outfield.

Duncan enjoys a special relationship with Guerrero--actually, several relationships.

“Guerrero is like my mother, my father, and my brother,” Duncan said. “He’s taken care of everything for me. Manny Mota’s helped me a lot, too.”

Said Guerrero: “I remember what it was like when I first came up, and I want to help him as much as I can.”

Duncan stayed with Guerrero and his wife, Denise, during his first three months in L.A. “That’s my mom,” a smiling Duncan said of Denise. “She sees me and says, ‘Hi, son,’ and I say, ‘Hi, mom.’ It’s very nice, really.”

Now, Duncan lives with Guerrero’s older brother, Juan, in a condo that Guerrero owns in Lafayette Park. Juan also does the driving, since Duncan doesn’t have a California license.

“I’ve never seen a city like L.A.,” Duncan said. “I love L.A., just like the commercial.

“I have a lot of friends in Redondo Beach, and there are a lot of people in L.A. who speak Spanish, which makes it a lot easier.”

And his English is coming along just fine--sort of. “Sax is teaching me English, and I’m teaching him Spanish,” Duncan said. Now there’s a conversation that even Berlitz might be hard-pressed to translate.

The switch-hitting is coming along more slowly. Duncan is batting only .219 from the left side, exactly 100 points lower than from the right, his natural side. But the experiment will continue.

“It never enters my mind,” said Mota, when asked if Duncan might be better off not trying to switch.

Said Ben Hines, the Dodgers’ other batting instructor: “If he had hit .250 in Albuquerque this season, I would have said he had a good year, and was an excellent prospect.”

The prospect, however, has arrived. Ahead of schedule, perhaps, but judging by his impact on the Dodger infield, just in time.