Mariano Duncan

Video Game Dud, or Major League (not quite) Stud?

What I remember most vividly about Mariano Duncan was his place in the New York Yankees' lineup in my Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball Gameboy game. As a kid, I played a full season as the Yankees and had Cecil Fielder and Darryl Strawberry each chasing sixty home runs. Wade Boggs, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill, and Tino Martinez formed the rest of that circa-1997 murderers row. The offensively anemic but defensively gifted and beloved Joe Girardi occupied a portion of the bottom of the order (often swapped out for a young and equally offensively inept Jorge Posada). Then there was this “M. Duncan” fellow. An automatic out in the game, and a hurdle to get over to reset the lineup for the big boppers. From 1998 through 2013, the Yankees enjoyed remarkable stability at second base – from Knoblauch, to Soriano, to Cano – and then again over the previous seven seasons during Gleyber Torres' tenure with New York. This was certainly not the case during the first seven years of the 1990s. For eight seasons, the Yankees endured an endless parade of second basemen – Steve Sax, Pat Kelly, Mike Gallego, Randy Velarde, Andy Fox, Luis Sojo, Rey Sánchez, and Mariano Duncan all shared the bulk of the second base duties.

As we have all done in our childhoods, I have reduced certain ball players into one firmly cemented memory or insignificant factoid. For a long time, I thought Orlando Merced must be a surefire Hall of Famer because I had a really nifty Topps hologram card of him. Thanks to Ken Griffey Jr. and his Gameboy game, poor Mariano Duncan didn't stand a chance in my memory. But as I grew older and began to learn more about the history of the game, Duncan's name began popping up with astonishing frequency. He was a member of some very good Los Angeles Dodgers teams through the late 1980s, won a World Series with the Cincinnati Reds in 1990, played against the Blue Jays in the 1993 World Series as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies, won another World Series with the Yankees in 1996, and retired as a Toronto Blue Jay in 1997. Legions of far better players never enjoyed the team success that Mariano Duncan did throughout his twelve seasons in the big leagues. Perhaps no former Blue Jay is more tailor-made for the kinds of profiles I enjoy researching and writing.

Mariano Duncan in the twilight of his career with the Toronto Blue Jays.