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Lo Duca Is a Breed of Catcher That the Nats Find Appealing
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"He's intelligent," said veteran left-hander Odalis P¿rez, who will start Opening Night and played with Lo Duca with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2002 to '04. "He's smart. He goes through every hitter with the approach the hitter might take. . . . He has a good memory."
Not just about baseball, either. Try horse racing. He first hung around the sport at Turf Paradise in Phoenix, where his father had stakes in small claims horses. Then, in his years with the Dodgers, he befriended jockey Mike Smith, who lived in the same Los Angeles apartment complex. Smith and Lo Duca are now close friends.
"When you have a passion for something like he has, you're bound to get better at it," Smith said by phone Monday. "He's gotten the opportunity to find out about the back side of it. Some people spend years and years working at it, but he seems to have a natural knack for picking horses that can run."
Indeed, this is serious business to Lo Duca. He envisions a future beyond baseball -- and considering he turns 36 next month, that might not be far off -- in which he is a breeder.
"It fascinates me how the breeding works, how some are bred to run long, some short," he said. "They're a little bit like humans. They have personalities. Some have 'morning glory,' where they run good in the morning and can't do it at night. It's very intricate, and I love to study it, love to research it."
Lo Duca gets regular reports over a racing database when his horses run, and he talks to his trainers frequently. But nothing is like race day. He owns a 40 percent share of Golden Spikes in a group that includes former major league pitcher Rob Murphy. If the horse shows well at the Illinois Derby, he could end up in -- gulp -- the Kentucky Derby.
That afternoon, the Nationals host the Pirates. The trip to Louisville, the mint juleps, will have to wait until retirement.
"I got to play baseball," Lo Duca said. "This is my work. This is what comes first."
