Batting average .259 Role Baseball player Home runs 237 Height 1.88 m | Runs batted in 879 Weight 88 kg Name Doug DeCinces Spouse Kristi DeCinces | |
 | ||
Education University of California, Los Angeles Children Amy DeCinces, Tim DeCinces | ||
Det bal doug decinces walk off home run
Douglas Vernon DeCinces (born August 29, 1950) is a former Major League Baseball third baseman.
Contents
DeCinces played PONY League Baseball and Colt League Baseball in Northridge, California, with fellow major leaguer Dwight Evans. He attended and played for Los Angeles Pierce College, and is in their Athletic Hall of Fame.
He began his major league career with the Baltimore Orioles late in the 1973 season, and he played for the Orioles in the ensuing eight full seasons. On June 22, 1979, in one of the most famous games in Orioles history, he hit a game-winning home run at Memorial Stadium off Detroit Tigers reliever Dave Tobik. The Orioles were trailing the Tigers 5-3 going into the bottom of the ninth inning. With one out, Ken Singleton hit a solo home run off Tobik to bring the Orioles within one. Eddie Murray reached base on a single, and, with two outs, DeCinces hit a two-run home run to give the Orioles a 6-5 victory. The win has been called "the night Oriole Magic was born." DeCinces said years later that the game and his home run "triggered something" and that "the emotion just multiplied from there," adding that the ensuing atmosphere of excitement was in no small part due to the excited call of the home run by announcers Bill O'Donnell and Charley Eckman on the Orioles' radio network. The Orioles went on to win the American League pennant in 1979.
In 1982, the Orioles traded DeCinces to the California Angels for Dan Ford in order to make room for Cal Ripken, Jr.. (Ironically, DeCinces had begun his career in Baltimore as the successor to Orioles third baseman Brooks Robinson.) DeCinces was a member of the American League All Star Team in 1983. Released by the Angels on September 23, 1987, he concluded his major league career by playing in four games for the St. Louis Cardinals late in the 1987 season. In total, DeCinces played for fifteen seasons (1973–1987) in the major leagues for three different teams, including nine years with the Orioles and six years with the Angels.
In 1988, DeCinces played for the Yakult Swallows in Japan. He missed the final two months of the season because of back problems and, on his doctors' advice, retired from baseball after the end of the season. His experiences in Japan led to him being hired as a consultant for the 1992 film Mr. Baseball, about a veteran American ballplayer who is traded to a Japanese baseball club and is forced to contend with overwhelming expectations and cultural differences during the team's run at the pennant.
DeCinces twice finished in the top 25 voting for the American League Most Valuable Player, finishing third in 1982 and 11th in 1986 while playing for the California Angels. In 1982 he also won the Silver Slugger Award.
He was inducted into the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame on August 26, 2006.
On August 4, 2011, DeCinces, along with three others, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with insider trading ahead of a company buyout. In a civil suit, the SEC alleged that DeCinces and his associates made more than $1.7 million in illegal profits when Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories Inc. announced its plan to purchase Advanced Medical Optics Inc. through a tender offer. Without admitting or denying the allegations, DeCinces agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle the SEC's charges.
In November 2012, DeCinces received a criminal indictment on insider trading related to the same incident and was charged with securities fraud and money laundering. On May 12, 2017, after a nearly two-month trial, a federal court jury in Santa Ana, California found him and an associate guilty on all 13 charges.
Each of the 17 felony convictions carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.