TAMPA – Never cheat the game. That’s the lesson Shelley Duncan learned growing up in his baseball family.
Never cheat life.
That’s the lesson Duncan learned this past November when blood clots in his right shoulder could have ended much more than his baseball career. He could have died.
“Yeah, in the worst-case scenario,” Duncan told me in an almost quiet voice yesterday at Legends Field.
“Anything that goes on with your health that you have no control over, that you don’t have any answers to, that happens out of nowhere, it scares you,” he said. “It gives you countless sleepless nights.”
Duncan has turned the traumatic experience into a positive life-changing experience.
“After you go through something like that, it’s almost like you don’t allow yourself to relax because you have this feeling that anything could happen in a matter of an instant, so never take anything for granted,” he said.
“It kind of put me on the edge, so now I’m on the edge all the time.”
Duncan, 28, always has played the game with zest and became an instant fan favorite last July with his home runs and monster high fives. Now he has turned it up another notch. This spring he is crushing the ball and gives Joe Girardi options. Duncan will play some first base, some DH, some outfield and come off the bench to pinch-hit.
“He’s as prepared as any guy I’ve ever had,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. “His mindset is ‘I’m going to make the most of this.’ ”
Noted general manager Brian Cashman, “A right-handed hitter with power, this game doesn’t have much of that any more, it’s a nice combination.”
Duncan’s life changed when his right arm was feeling “heavy” and the armpit “blew up like a golf ball.” Duncan immediately went online to see what was going on with his body. He then rushed from his home in Tucson to Phoenix to be examined. At first he thought it might have been cancer.
Cancer was ruled out, but he was not out of danger.
“It ends up being the worst-case scenario,” Duncan said. “It put me in a real scary situation where they had to throw me in an ICU and have an emergency procedure done right away.
“All that happened in like a million miles an hour, it didn’t give me time to do anything,” Duncan said. “I’m sitting there all alone in Phoenix, saying, ‘What the hell? I’m in the ICU, that’s where people die.’ ”
Blood could not circulate through the shoulder area.
“Something got pinched off in there,” said Duncan, who also got pulled over for speeding on the way to the hospital from his doctor’s office, but he did not get a ticket once he explained to the policeman what was happening.
“I was very fortunate to have the doctors and the nurses I had at Good Samaritan Hospital. The nurses were amazing. I owe so much to them for keeping my mind at ease, talking to me, teaching me about what happened. It was a tough experience, but a great one.”
The procedure was an intricate one.
“They stuck a tube in my arm and it was like a little blender. It blended up everything. Then there was a balloon. They blew up the balloon, it felt like a hot dog in my chest, and they are doing this and I’m awake, looking at all this in like a TV. I had a little painkiller injected in the left arm, so it was a little trippy, I’m like ‘Wow, that’s my arm,’ ” Duncan said. “You hear the blender inside your chest, and they suck it all out, they just got rid of all the blood clots.”
Duncan spent three days in the intensive care unit and a week in the hospital.
Once he was released, Duncan still had some difficult times.
“Everything could have been gone in an instant,” said Duncan, whose father Dave is the most respected pitching coach in baseball.
“There were nights I couldn’t fall asleep because I was thinking about all this stuff,” he said. “A lot of good people helped me.”
Duncan credits Chad Bohling, the Yankees director of optimal performance.
“I talked to him a lot during this whole thing, because it really puts a lot on your mind and I needed to learn how to deal with it,” he said. “He gave me a positive mindset.”
Duncan is making the most of that mindset and health this spring.
“You know when people say ‘Health, happiness’ and all that stuff,” Duncan said. “Now it’s like, ‘Health’ yeah, I really do appreciate it.’ And when I hear stories about people who have cancer and get the bad news and stuff like that, that really hits me, because just for a glimpse I can see what they’re thinking and feeling.
“Just a glimpse, I can feel what their heart feels like. I’m inspired by those people.”
Expect the smiles and high-fives to be even more super-charged this season.