Don Mattingly
Talk of Don Mattingly’s worthiness for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame most often focuses on his offensive statistics. Perhaps not enough is said about his defense. Mattingly has one of the best career fielding percentages of any player – ever – at any position. His .9959 percentage means that every 1,000 times the ball came his way, he made only four errors. He won nine Gold Glove awards, the second most among first basemen. Not that his offense was to be sneered at: a .307 lifetime batting average, 222 home runs, and three straight seasons of more than 200 hits.
Still, in Mattingly’s 15 years on the baseball writers’ ballot, he was never favored by more than 28.2 percent of the voters; his percentage on the ballots for the 2014 and 2015 inductions was in the single digits, and he was removed from the baseball writers’ ballot. His hopes for election were entrusted to the Hall of Fame’s Modern Era Committee. The debate over Mattingly’s merits will continue.
At Reitz Memorial High School, Don stood out in three sports. He was the football team’s starting quarterback and the basketball squad’s star point guard. But it was one American Legion baseball game that convinced Don that he was a baseball player. In a 1976 game against the neighboring town of Owensboro, Kentucky, he faced a pitcher who was the Cincinnati Reds’ top draft pick that year. Don, a freshman, hit two doubles off the star. He soon had developed a name for himself. Scouts were occasionally seen at his games, and he began receiving letters offering college scholarships to play baseball. At one point Mattingly helped Reitz Memorial to a 59-game winning streak, with one of those wins coming in the Indiana state championship game in his junior season.
Along with his father, Mattingly said that his biggest influence with respect to his work ethic was his high-school baseball coach, Quentin Merkel, who was always pushing Mattingly to get better.
“Coach would say to me, if you are the best player in the region, you should try to become the best in the state,” Mattingly said. “If you are best in the state, then you start thinking about being the best in the country. That ethic, to always get better, helped me in the minor leagues when I was fighting for jobs.”
By 1979 Mattingly had become a hot prospect, even earning a brief write-up in Sports Illustrated for his exploits. Most teams avoided drafting the high-school star, however, because many expected that he would attend college. Taking a chance, the New York Yankees selected him in the 19th round of the 1979 amateur draft and subsequently signed him to a minor-league deal.
Mattingly enjoyed almost instant success in the minor leagues, hitting .349 with the Oneonta Yankees of the Class-A (short season) New York-Penn League in 53 games in 1979. The next year, he moved up to Greensboro (North Carolina) of the Class-A South Atlantic League, where he led the league with a .358 batting average. After a strong year for Double-A Nashville (Southern League) in 1981 (.315, 98 RBIs), Mattingly was promoted to Triple-A Columbus for 1982. He had another fine season, hitting .315 with 10 home runs and 75 RBIs, and winning accolades for his defensive play.
When major-league clubs expanded their rosters to 40 players in September, the Yankees called up Mattingly Years later, he fondly recalled his first trip to the House That Ruth Built. “I think the time that I really think about the most is just being called up and walking into Yankee Stadium for the first time, walking into the dugout and just seeing the left-field corner and the stands in that corner like the horseshoe there,” he said. “And at that point, just realizing the dream to get to the big leagues. So that is a moment that is always one of the freshest and just a great memory for me.”
Mattingly made his major-league debut on September 8, 1982, against the Baltimore Orioles in Yankee Stadium, as a ninth-inning defensive replacement for Dave Winfield in left field. Three days later Mattingly had his first major-league at-bat, against reliever Jim Slaton of the Milwaukee Brewers, and popped out to third base on the first pitch. It wasn’t until almost three weeks later that he managed his first major-league hit, an 11th-inning single off Boston’s Steve Crawford on October 1 in Yankee Stadium. In 12 major-league at-bats in 1982, he had two singles and one RBI.
Mattingly won a roster spot during spring training in 1983, but when the season began, he was used sparingly. Almost two weeks into the season, he had just seven at-bats and two hits, and on April 14, he was sent back down to Columbus. It was his last trip to the minor leagues.
In 43 games with Columbus, Mattingly hit better than .340 with 8 home runs and 37 RBIs. And when the Yankees’ Bobby Murcer announced his retirement on June 12, a roster spot and a reserve outfield position opened up in the Bronx, and Mattingly was called up to fill it. He spent the balance of the season as a spot starter, pinch-hitter, and defensive replacement in right field, left field, and first base. Mattingly also helped make some baseball history on August 18, 1983, when he played second base (as a left-handed thrower) in the finish of the George Brett “Pine Tar Game,” a contest that had begun almost a month earlier.
Mattingly got off to a hot start in ’84, a fact he attributed to having played winter ball in Puerto Rico. By midseason, he was hitting so well that some were beginning to compare him to the other young hitting star in New York City at the time, the Mets’ Darryl Strawberry. Among Mattingly’s biggest early supporters was Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who told reporters as early as June 1984 that “Mattingly is the best young talent in baseball. You can talk all you want about Strawberry. I’ll take Mattingly.” Steinbrenner had plenty of evidence to support his argument; at the time, Mattingly was outhitting Strawberry in every major offensive category.
The biggest surprise in Mattingly’s 1984 offensive game was his newly found power stroke. Although he had never hit more than 10 home runs in a season in the minor leagues, he had already hit 12 before the end of June that year. Lou Piniella, then the Yankees’ hitting coach, described that summer how he’d worked with Mattingly on his swing all year, urging the young hitter to keep his weight back and hold his body in balance throughout the entire swing. The slight shift in body weight that Piniella recommended led to more power.
In July Mattingly was named to his first All-Star Game, picked as a reserve by American League manager Joe Altobelli, who couldn’t ignore the Yankees first baseman’s .339 average and impressive power numbers. Mattingly got into the game with one out in the ninth inning as a pinch-hitter with the American League trailing 3-1. Batting against his former teammate, San Diego Padres closer Rich “Goose” Gossage, Mattingly flied out to left field.
As the second half of the 1984 season rolled on, teammates Mattingly and Winfield got into a heated race for the American League batting crown. Winfield hit like a demon during the first half of the season, and his average climbed to .377 in early July. In August, however, Winfield slipped a little, and Mattingly caught up to him. By the first of September, he was batting .352 to Winfield’s .351.
As the month wore on and the Yankees fell out of the divisional race, the competition for the batting title became the best running baseball story in New York City. The back pages of the city’s two tabloids, the Daily News and the Post, wrote about the race or ran full-page pictures of the contestants, almost every day. In a town that was always hungry for baseball success, the batting race took on the role of a surrogate pennant race for Yankees fans. The team’s owners loved the competition, because it kept fans coming to Yankee Stadium in droves, despite the fact that the Yankees were 15 games behind the Detroit Tigers. During the last two weeks of the season, the stadium scoreboard constantly displayed each player’s batting average, to the ninth digit, right up to the last at-bat. The excitement was justified; after all, no Yankee had won a batting crown since Mickey Mantle in 1956. And no two Yankees had ever finished 1-2 in hitting.
Going into the season’s final weekend, Mattingly led Winfield .342 to .341. When asked who he thought would prevail, Piniella predicted that Mattingly would win, but gave him the advantage only because the team was facing three right-handers in a row to close out the season, which favored the left-handed hitter. But Mattingly went just 1-for-7 on Friday and Saturday, and entered the last day of the season trailing Winfield .339 to .342. In the last game of the year, however, he managed four hits in five at-bats, while Winfield was just 1-for-4. After Mattingly got his last hit, Winfield hit a sharp grounder to the shortstop, who forced a sliding Mattingly out at second base. As the new batting champ walked toward the dugout, the fans roared in salute, and after a few moments in the dugout, he re-emerged and walked to first base. Mattingly and Winfield shook hands, and walked off the field together as the crowd cheered. Mattingly had won the race, .343 to .340.
In the offseason, George Steinbrenner acquired Rickey Henderson from the Oakland A’s in exchange for five players and cash. The Mattingly-Henderson combination worked just as Steinbrenner had hoped. By the All-Star break, Henderson was batting a league-leading .357, and his on-base percentage stood at .441. He’d stolen 41 bases, which meant that he was on base almost half the time, and when he was on, he usually managed to place himself in scoring position.
In some respects, Mattingly’s 1986 season was even more dominant than his MVP campaign the year before. He hit .352, with 238 hits, 53 doubles, 31 home runs, and 113 RBIs. He finished second to Roger Clemens that year in MVP voting. But once again, the Yankees stumbled. On August 15 they were within three games of the first-place Red Sox, and the Bronx seemed poised for an old-style Yankees-Red Sox pennant race. But the Yankees dropped 13 of their next 20 games, fell behind by 10 games and never made another serious run for the division crown. They did win a respectable 90 games, but when the playoffs began, the Yankees were once again on the outside looking in.
Mattingly began the 1987 season in a slump. While he had a tendency to start slow, this was worse than usual. After the first 33 games, he was hitting .240 with just three home runs. Then he hit his groove. Between May 14 and June 4, he raised his batting average to .311, and during that 20-game stretch knocked in 15 runs. Just as he was returning to form, however, Mattingly injured his lower back on June 4. Although the injury was not devastating, it did require Mattingly to spend five days in traction at NYU hospital. Doctors at the time described the injury as two protruding disks that wouldn’t require surgery, but would need a few weeks of rest. While Mattingly was on the shelf, he was replaced by a young up-and-coming left-handed slugger named Dan Pasqua. But Mattingly wouldn’t play the role of Wally Pipp to Pasqua’s Lou Gehrig, because when he returned three weeks later, he caught fire. In his first 13 games back, Mattingly hit .370 (20-for-54) and knocked home 12 runs. It was a nice prelude for what was to follow.
When he returned three weeks later, he caught fire. In his first 13 games back, Mattingly hit .370 (20-for-54) and knocked home 12 runs. It was a nice prelude for what was to follow. The streak began on July 8, 1987, in the bottom of the first inning at Yankee Stadium versus the Minnesota Twins, when Mattingly drove a Mike Smithson fastball over the right-field wall for a three-run homer. In Texas, Mattingly hit a Jose Guzman sinker in the fourth inning that cleared the 11-foot-high fence in left-center field. The ball traveled just beyond the leap of Pete Incaviglia, the left fielder, to tie the major-league mark for consecutive home runs.
Mattingly continued his All-Star-level play over the next two years. Even though he drove home only 88 runs in 1988, his two-year average for 1988-89 was a .307 average, 21 home runs, and 101 RBIs. Although Mattingly may have slowed down slightly since the mid-’80s, had he been able to maintain even this more modest pace, he looked like a future Hall of Famer. At least that is what a lot of knowledgeable baseball men said about Mattingly during the end of the 1980s.
Pitchers at the time felt that the only way to approach Mattingly was with a variety of pitches. “I usually throw my whole repertoire at him,” said Frank Viola, the Minnesota Twins’ left-hander, who was the Most Valuable Player in the World Series the previous year. Viola had good success against Mattingly, holding him to nine hits in 50 at-bats over the course of their careers. “You’ve got to mix it up and hope he’s not looking for that certain pitch.”
In the face of all this praise, Mattingly was humble, always preaching the workaday ethic. He described his approach to hitting as more of a mental struggle than a physical feat.
During his first six full seasons, Mattingly’s career batting average stood at .327, and he averaged 203 hits, 43 doubles, 27 home runs, 114 RBIs, and 97 runs scored. He also won five straight Gold Gloves and made six consecutive All-Star teams. Mattingly made it known that he wanted a new contract, or an extension of his existing deal that concluded at the end of the 1990 season. The Yankees responded by making him the highest-paid player in baseball history at the time.
In 1990 Mattingly’s two discs in his back began to act up again. Although he came back for a pain-filled 10-day stint from July 14 through July 24, the Yankees put Mattingly on the disabled list on July 26. Merrill said the first baseman could be out for the remainder of the season. Although the Yankees reinstated Mattingly from the DL on September 12, it was clear that the chronic back injury, which doctors had described as a congenital disk deformity.
During the offseason, Mattingly underwent a rigorous physical therapy regimen on his back. He rose at 6:00 A.M. four days a week at his home in Evansville to perform stretches and lifts that he’d learned the summer before while he was on the disabled list. By the time spring training rolled around, the first baseman sounded optimistic that he could regain his old form and on March 1, 1991, Mattingly was given even more motivation to get back on top, when he was named the captain of the Yankees.
Many credit Mattingly with making the adjustment to major-league life a little bit easier. One story has it that when Bernie Williams first came to the Yankees in 1991, teammate Mel Hall called him “Bambi” because, he said, Bernie’s big round eyeglasses made him look like a deer caught in the headlights. What started as fine, good-natured rookie ribbing soon went over the line, with Hall taking advantage of his veteran status to haze Williams mercilessly. For some reason, it was personal for Hall, who may have seen the talented young outfielder as a threat to his own job, and as young and vulnerable as Williams was at the time, it really got to him. Until Mattingly intervened. He was friendly with Hall, and told him to cool it. Then he took Williams under his wing for a while.
In 1995 Mattingly made his first and only post season appearance. Yankee fans were elated to see their team back in the postseason for the first time in 14 years. The first two games of the new best-of-five ALDS were played at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees won the first two games but Seattle took the series by winning the final three games.
Mattingly announced in the offseason that he wanted to sit out 1996, but did not formally retire, suggesting that he might like to play another year with a team closer to his home in Indiana but on January 22, 1997, after his one-year self-imposed rest, Mattingly announced his retirement during a press conference at Yankee Stadium.
Mattingly’s place in baseball history is an unusual one. For six years he was the game’s best player, averaging .327, 203 hits, 43 doubles, 27 home runs, 114 RBIs, and 97 runs scored. But the second half of his career was hampered by his congenitally bad back. Although he won four more Gold Gloves in the 1990s, his batting average dropped. His power numbers also declined to an average of just 10 home runs and 64 RBIs. But if one looks a little deeper into those numbers, it’s clear that Mattingly really only had one bad season, 1990. And while 1991 and 1992 were both mediocre, his 162-game averages over the last five years of his career were a .291 batting average, 13 home runs and 83 RBIs.
In time perhaps Mattingly may find his way into the Hall of Fame. Perhaps not. Either way, Don Mattingly will likely be remembered by baseball fans just as he once wished when he said, “When you think of me, think of me on the baseball field.”
