The journey of five former CDO baseball stars begins with humble roots

By Christopher C. Wuensch

Photos by Scott Salisbury

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day in Surprise, Ariz., and the serpents of the Grand Canyon state are on high alert. Not from ole St. Patty himself — he who allegedly drove the snakes from Ireland — rather from Brian Anderson, who has returned to the state where his slithering road to the Major Leagues began.

Anderson’s journey to the Bigs is one he shares with four of his former teammates at Oro Valley’s Canyon Del Oro High School. Most public school programs are ecstatic when one of its players goes pro. Five from the same is diamond is borderline fictitious.

Though privileged now by the spoils of Major League Baseball, the CDO five were the same as any other high school quintet —  idling away their time from being hazed as freshman to their senior prom — especially when it came to dogging baseball practice.

“We were really going to Shelley and Chris’ (Duncan) house and watching TV and playing basketball and doing other stuff like going and shooting snakes,” said Anderson, who will begin the season with the Kansas City Royals’ Triple-A club in Omaha.

“We’d all get together and try to find gophers and snakes. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do back in the day but it was still a lot of fun.”

Don’t alert PETA of the teenage antics of Anderson and his CDO teammates Ian Kinsler, Scott Hairston and Chris and Shelley Duncan just yet.

The only homicide they’re looking commit these days is against hanging curveballs — except for the quirky Anderson that is, who announced late this spring that he’s converting from an outfielder to a pitcher.

Anyone’s who’s met the ebullient Anderson knows he’s always got a smile and plenty to say — especially his best friend Kinsler who fondly remembers the first time he met Anderson.

“He tried to steal my girlfriend,” Kinsler chuckling, recalling his middle school days in Oro Valley while standing at his locker in the Texas Ranger clubhouse.

“We almost got in a fight, but after that we became best friends.

Kinsler and Anderson have reunited this spring with the Rangers and Royals, who both train at Surprise Stadium where both teams share the training facility.

When it comes to rivalries, there’s an enmity greater than that of the Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees, of for whom Chris Duncan (the former) and Shelley Duncan (the latter) have both played.

It’s sibling rivalry and it predates even the age-old game of baseball.

Despite playing in nearly 500 Big League games combined, the brothers have never faced one another on a Major League diamond.

But that doesn’t mean that Chris wouldn’t gladly give his older brother an earful.

Until last October, Chris — owner of 55 career home runs to Shelley’s 8 — had the upper hand — and it wasn’t just in the race for the family lead in career long balls.

“He’s always used it against me,” Shelley said of the World Series ring his brother won in 2006 with the St. Louis Cardinals.

The gloating was short lived. Shelley expects his 2009 New York Yankees’ World Series hardware to arrive in the mail any day now.

Shelley is now with the Cleveland Indians and brother Chris with the Washington Nationals, but the two find time to talk almost daily.

One of those Yankees’ rings will also arrive in the mailbox of Hairston’s older brother Jerry. And the reveling surely will soon follow in the locker room of the San Diego Padres this season, where Jerry and Scott are now teammates.

While Kinsler and Hairston are the only two of the five former CDO players that have made their respective clubs coming out of spring training, they’re ironically the only ones bereft of a World Series ring.

Anderson earned his as a member of the 2005 champion Chicago White Sox.

Whether or not all five Dorados earn a roster spot this season, there is no denying the talent of arguably the greatest public high school baseball team ever assembled.

Miami’s Westminster Christian High School teams of the early 90s featured Alex Rodriguez, Doug Mientkiewicz and two other drafted prospects. Rodriguez alone has 357 more career home runs than all the five Dorados combined and just as many state titles.

Canyon Del Oro won its 1997 and 2000 state championships in the 5A compared to Westminster’s 1A, where competition is traditionally lighter.

Add CDO pitcher Ryan Schroyer — who was drafted and played several years in the Boston Red Sox — to the mix and those Dorado teams sent six players to the pros.

“It was all about playing as hard as you can, having fun and winning,” Shelley said of the Dorado teams. “I don’t know what it was but everybody on that team wanted to win.”

The years CDO didn’t win a state title, however, were considered better teams and ranked nationally, said Kinsler, who admits he was the last player on those teams expected to reach the Majors.

The keys to the program’s success aren’t attributed to the Big-League lineage of the Duncan brothers — whose father was the pitching coach of the Oakland A’s — and Hairston — who is the fifth member of his family to play pro ball.

The Dorado’s success stems from a strong Little League, Duncan said and Kinsler confirmed.

“We played together since we were 8, 9 years old,” Shelley said. “That really created really a good sense of team and a really good work ethic because, what that did, was it allowed us to push each other and make each other better. I think that’s what that whole CDO atmosphere was all about.”

Today, CDO Little League is still going strong and home to reigning 10-11 year old state champs. That’s good news for an area that’s sent seven players — lest we forget Colin Porter (Astros and Cardinals) and Jason Stanford (Indians) — to the MLB ranks and bad news for the gophers, snakes and any other critters that may pop out their heads out of desert holes.

Christopher C. Wuensch is the former sports editor of the Explorer in northwest Tucson and of the Bluffton Today in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. He currently pens the blog Prose and Cons where he writes about everything from UA sports to fighting Swiss hockey players.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.