One of the main perks of rooting for a successful, easily embraceable team comes during the all-star break, when you can send a ridiculously disproportionate and inappropriate number of your team's stars to an event supposedly roped off to only the best and brightest in the game. Thus, Phillies fans took full advantage of the momentum the Phils created with the Macho Row pennant-winning team in '93, and carried it over to voting for the 1994 mid-summer classic. One of the two Phillies voted in, centerfielder Lenny Dykstra, was at least an arguable inclusion with his .296 batting average, 11 stolen bases and 59 runs scored, though he had missed about a month due to injury (and indeed would sit out the All-Star Game altogether). Mariano Duncan, on the other hand, was pretty much indefensible, with his .265 batting average, six home runs and nine stolen bases being essentially the picture of mediocrity.
To be fair, Duncan might not have been the worst keystone fielder on the team, as Pittsburgh's Carlos Garcia's stats (.273 BA, 3 HR, 13 SB) might even have been more staggeringly average than Duncan's. But consider the line of the NL's other reserve 2B, the perennial all-star Craig Biggio (.322 BA, 63 R, 24 SB), and you might notice a bit of a discrepancy. But really, the entire Phillies presence at the '94 all-star game looks somewhat odd in retrospect--especially considering that of the four Phillies eventually selected to play in the game, only Dykstra would still be with the team by the end of the 1995 season. Duncan was waived by the Phillies and signed with the Reds, starting pitcher Danny Jackson left as a free agent to go to the Cardinals, and closer Doug Jones (who ended up as the game's winning pitcher) departed for the Orioles.
And I promise, we will eventually talk about historic occasions not pertaining to the early-mid 90s Phils again at some point.
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