That Mariano Duncan, He’s a Real Pip

In all the telling and retelling of the legend of Wally Pipp, few men have put it in as plain an English as Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda did Tuesday when he said: “If that guy don’t come up with the headache, where would Lou Gehrig be?”

The subject was putting a new guy in the lineup and never getting him out of there. Gehrig, of course, replaced Pipp at first base for the Yankees on June 1, 1925. Two thousand one hundred and thirty games later, Gehrig was still there.

Mariano Duncan might be around for a while, too.

One day this spring, Duncan traveled from Vero Beach, Fla., to Albuquerque, N.M., to report to the Dodgers’ Triple-A farm team. Late that night, between midnight and 1 a.m., Pat McKernan, the club’s top executive, called Duncan. He told him to get his 22-year-old self to Houston in a hurry.

This is a big joke, Duncan thought. “I put down the phone and say, ‘What is going on here?’ This is my friend playing a joke on me. I have this friend from Venezuela and he loves to play jokes on me.”

It was no joke. “Next day I am in Houston and I look at the lineup and there I am, batting No. 1, batting against Nolan Ryan. He strike me out, three pitches, boom, boom, boom--fastball, fastball, breaking ball and I sit down.”

The first batter in the first inning of the first game of the Dodger season was Mariano Duncan, who was supposed to be in New Mexico. The rest of the guys welcomed him to the club and then warned him about Ryan, who was not exactly the man a rookie wants to face in his first big-league at-bat. Duncan told them: “I don’t care. I am not scared of anybody.”

He remembers everything that happened next. Popping up to the second baseman. Lining out to the center fielder. Coming back to the ballpark the next day and seeing his name on the lineup card again. Leading off the game with a single off Joe Niekro.

“I got my first major league hit, I stole my first major league base and I scored my first major league run,” Duncan recalled, relaxing like an old pro in the Dodger clubhouse Tuesday. “And right after that, Houston comes here, and I get my first major league home run, and you know who it’s off? Joe Niekro.”

He was off and running, and Gehrig would have been proud. The only reason Duncan started the season opener at second base was because Steve Sax suffered a last-minute injury. Second base was where Duncan played in the minors. Before that, he was a center fielder. The only real shortstop he had played was during a spring drill, when coach Mark Cresse pounded grounders at him by the hundreds.

Lasorda studied him in those practices and filed the information away. “Now, then, the thing you gotta know about me is that nobody on one of my teams ever loses a job because he goes on the disabled list,” the manager said. “That job belongs to him until he loses it. So, when Sax got back, the second base job was still his.

“Everybody waited to see what I was going to do with Duncan. I either had to put him on the bench or send him back to Albuquerque. And everybody thought he was going back. But I went in and talked to the Chief (Al Campanis, the general manager). I said, ‘I want to put this kid at shortstop.’ And I did. And that kid took to shortstop like a duck takes to water.”

Duncan made splendid plays. He made 30 errors, but many of them came early in the year. The fact that he contributed a .244 batting average and 38 stolen bases on offense was not lost on the Dodgers, but what dazzled them most was his defense. So much so that they dare to mention his name in the same sentences with Ozzie Smith, the man who will play shortstop for St. Louis in the league championship series about to begin.

Third baseman Bill Madlock said Tuesday: “He makes my job easy, that’s what he does. I feel like I can play another 100 years if I play alongside Mariano, and all I’ll have to do is cover two feet from side to side.

“You know, when the season started and the Dodgers came into Pittsburgh, I looked at Mariano Duncan at shortstop and I said: ‘Uh, oh. They’re going to be in trouble. This kid can’t hack it at shortstop.’ Then they came back in July and I watched him play, and I said, ‘Uh, oh. This kid is for real.’ ”

Madlock was asked if Duncan already might be the best shortstop who ever has been at his side. “Talent-wise, yes,” Madlock said. “Johnnie Lemaster was an outstanding shortstop, but Mariano’s got more speed, more flair. Defensive-wise, he’s gonna be right up there with Ozzie Smith.”

Without prodding, Lasorda said the same thing: “I look at him and I look at Ozzie Smith his first year in baseball with the Padres, and this guy is better than Ozzie was that year.”

Duncan was amazed and pleased at becoming a shortstop. He already was trying to learn how to switch-hit--in the majors--after batting right-handed most of his life. Now he was learning a new position--in the majors--for a famous team, in front of 40,000-plus crowds, and, before long, in a pennant race.

What struck him as funny was that so many of the men he knew from San Pedro de Macoris, in the Dominican Republic, had turned out to be shortstops. Sure, Pedro Guerrero didn’t, but, “Julio Franco did, and Rafael Ramirez, Tony Fernandez, Alfredo Griffin, all shortstops,” Duncan said. “Back home, everybody talk about Rafael. Or everybody would say, ‘I want to grow up and be like Alfredo.’ ”

His own hero, however, was Cesar Cedeno, who is now one of the Cardinals trying to keep him from going to the World Series. One of Duncan’s favorite moments of his first season was Cedeno inviting him home for dinner in Cincinnati. “When I grow up I like to see Cesar play more than anything,” Duncan said. “He had everything, you know? Good power, good fielding, good speed. I like to see him steal bases especially, but he does not do that so much now.”

Well, Cedeno did have 14 steals, he was told.

“He does? Hey, that’s not too bad!” Duncan said, excitedly.

Duncan is becoming a hero back home. He is looking forward to visiting his family, including his 10 brothers and sisters, as soon as the season ends, and hopes next season to fly some of them to the United States to see him play. For now, he is running up some pretty heavy phone bills at the condo he shares with Guerrero’s brother.

“The Dodgers want me to play winter ball, so I will,” Duncan said. “But first I have to go home and take, you know, one week off of baseball. I have to take a rest.”

One week is all he wants. Guys who rest too long sometimes rest forever.