Lost Voices: Doug DeCinces

One could argue that he endured the toughest individual challenge in Orioles history: Replacing Brooks Robinson.

(One in a series of articles highlighting former Orioles whom I interviewed for my oral history a quarter-century ago, but only on the phone, depriving me of a recording that I could play now as part of the Bird Tapes.)

Doug DeCinces would never forget the day his baseball life changed forever.

In early 1973, he was 22 and excited about being at spring training with the Orioles, as opposed to being at their minor league camp. For the club’s third-round draft pick from a few years earlier, it meant he was a step closer to the major leagues.

Thus far in the minors, he’d played mostly shortstop and second base. Then one morning in Miami, where the Orioles trained, coaches Billy Hunter and Jim Frey brought him into their office and delivered some sobering news.

“We want you to go to (Triple A) Rochester and play third base this year,” they said.

The part about going to Triple A was exciting; he’d been in Double A the year before. But third base?

“Whoa, that’s Brooks’ position,” DeCinces said, referencing Brooks Robinson, the Orioles’ legendary third baseman, who was still going strong in 1973.

The coaches explained that the Orioles already had a young shortstop, Mark Belanger, so DeCinces had no future at that position in Baltimore. Nor did he have an apparent future at second base, where a young player, Bobby Grich, was just taking over.

“Why me?” DeCinces asked about being groomed to replace Robinson.

“We think you’re strong enough to do it,” the coaches said.

Suddenly, the storyline of his career was set. He’d grown up in Southern California, but if he proved capable, he’d eventually replace a legend in Baltimore.

Years later, when I spoke to DeCinces in 1999 for my book on Orioles history, we spent a long time on the subject that ultimately defined him. Taking over for Brooks. Replacing the irreplaceable.

He did it. It nearly broke him. But he endured and eventually prospered.

He was, indeed, strong enough.

“I don’t know that everyone could have done that,” DeCinces told me.

Initially, it didn’t happen at the pace he wanted. While DeCinces got better and better at third base with Rochester in 1973 and 1974, Orioles manager Earl Weaver continued to play Robinson, by now in his late 30s with his talents finally ebbing.

In 1975, after DeCinces refused to go back to Rochester, he sat on the Orioles’ bench and backed up Robinson. He was 24 and itchy.

“Earl gave Brooks every opportunity, and it cost me. Cost me playing time, opportunity, experience, everything,” DeCinces told me. “But I understood it. It wasn't just anyone (he was replacing). The timing was just unfortunate.”

Robinson, in his interview for my book, told me, “Doug probably should have played a little before he did. No question, he should have, But Earl liked to go with veterans. Doug was waiting around. It was definitely hard for him.”

DeCinces finally claimed the starting job in 1976. “There were some very ugly times,” he said. He was occasionally booed at home when his name was announced as the starting third baseman. Sportswriters from coast to coast wrote about him replacing Robinson, questioning whether he could. A Detroit columnist mocked him.

“It was hard not to take it all personally,” DeCinces said. “Players on other teams would say to me at third base, ‘Boy, am I glad I’m not you.’ I got hate mail saying, ‘You’ll never replace Brooks, you’re a California kid.’ Brooks would slap me on the butt and say, ‘Hang in there.’ On the field, Belanger was a big help. He was standing next to me (at shortstop) and he’d hear it all. He’d just say, ‘Hey, come on, don’t listen to that, let’s go.’”

The situation boiled over during a home game against the Minnesota Twins in June of 1976. After DeCinces botched several plays in the field early and struck out in his first at-bat, the crowd booed and chanted, “We want Brooks.” Weaver asked if he wanted to come out of the game. “Over my dead body,” DeCinces replied. He later collected three hits, including a home run, as the boos turned to cheers, which infuriated him.

“After the game I ripped off my uniform and said I wasn’t going to let the fans dictate my career,” he said. “That was the breaking point, that one game. I could have collapsed and that could’ve been (the end of) my career. I felt it was that close.”

The situation still festered until Robinson abruptly retired late in the 1977 season. When the team held a “Brooks Robinson Night” at Memorial Stadium in September, DeCinces clubbed a three-run homer dripping with symbolism.

“It felt like someone had lifted a thousand-pound weight off my shoulders. I think that was the last hurdle for me,” DeCinces said.

He still had to contend with Weaver, a manager who demanded excellence. They almost came to blows in the dugout during the first game of a doubleheader early in the 1978 season. The manager was experimenting with playing Eddie Murray at third base and DeCinces at second, and DeCinces botched a play. After the inning, Weaver jabbed a finger in DeCinces’ chest. DeCinces told him never to do it again. Weaver shouted that another player would replace him at second. DeCinces shouted back that he was through playing second for Weaver.

“I go down in the tunnel with (teammate) Pat Kelly, and Earl came down and said, ‘I’m not through with you,’” DeCinces recalled. “I lost it, threw Kelly off and went after him. If not for a policeman standing there in the hallway, I might not have been playing baseball anymore.”

But in a classic moment many on the team never forgot, Weaver — famous for not holding grudges — called a team meeting after the first game of the doubleheader and coolly explained that it was his job to push players. DeCinces was in the lineup for the second game — playing third base — and hit a key double. His teammates quietly congratulated him for the rare one-up of Weaver, although Weaver, ever combative, did pinch-run for him after the double.

From 1976 through 1981, DeCinces provided power, consistency and solid play at third base on a series of excellent teams, driving in nearly 400 runs and generating positive wins-above-replacement (WAR) figures. On June 22, 1979. he hit a game-wining home run at Memorial Stadium that is cited as the event that birthed the notion of “Oriole Magic.” That fall, he reached base 15 times during the postseason as the Orioles took on the California Angels in the American League playoffs and the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series.

The Orioles traded him to the Angels after the 1981 season, thinking Cal Ripken Jr. was ready to replace him. (DeCinces believed his strong voice in the players’ union also was a factor.) Ripken wound up at shortstop, and the team struggled to identify a new third baseman. DeCinces was missed, especially when he hit better as an Angel. He finished third in the voting for the American League’s Most Valuable Player award in 1982 after totaling 30 home runs and 97 RBIs.

Looking back, it’s hard not to speculate that he only realized his full potential after he left Baltimore and was no longer playing in Robinson’s shadow.

“I look at replacing Brooks as the single greatest accomplishment of my career,” DeCinces said. “Throw out the home runs and everything else. The fact that I was the one who had to go in there and replace him, and did it and went on to have a career, that was pretty special.”