The Lasting Sadness Of Donnie Baseball
By: Matt Wood
Tags: Sports, New York Yankees, Baseball

“The most striking aspect of Don Mattingly’s career, from one point of view, is the number of years that he produced mediocre statistics,” Murray Chass of The New York Times wrote after Mattingly retired and the Yankees unveiled his plaque in the famous Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. His career was divided in half: six years of domination, followed by six years of frustration and unfulfilled expectations.

He had the misfortune to play for the Yankees during one of the rare epochs when they weren’t a playoff dynasty. He was drafted in 1979, a year after they won the World Series, and made his debut in 1982, a year after the Yankees lost the Series to the Dodgers. He played in the postseason just once in his career — 1995, his final season. The Yankees lost in the division series to the Seattle Mariners, ending on Edgar Martinez’s dramatic double in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 5, as Ken Griffey Jr. slid into home. For his part, Mattingly hit .417 with a home run, four doubles, and six RBIs, but he’d never collect the World Series ring that seemed to be a birthright for every player in pinstripes.

The Yankees finally won the World Series again in 1996, while Mattingly was taking a self-imposed year off from baseball. He had left open the possibility of playing again someday, but after watching his old teammates win the championship while his replacement, Tino Martinez, drove in over 100 runs — something Mattingly hadn’t done since 1989 — too much had changed. “Once they had gone to the Series without us, there was no coming back,” his wife, Kim, said. He officially retired three months later.

Mattingly could not have foreseen that disappointment when he was a hot high school prospect in Evansville, though. He hit over .500 in his junior and senior years for Reitz Memorial, leading his team to a 59–1 record from 1978 to 1979. The Tigers won the Indiana state championship in 1978 with a perfect 30–0 record, and lost in extra innings in the championship game the next year, their only defeat of the season.

Besides the sweet swing and smooth glove that attracted the big league scouts, he had that certain work ethic that separates the best players from the rest. “It wasn’t just that he was the best player, he was the hardest worker,” said Quentin Merkel, his high school coach. “He was so driven — I’ve never had a player who could hit like him.” He was drafted that summer in the 19th round, going so low because teams were concerned about his lack of speed, and were convinced he wanted to go to college. But he signed with the Yankees and climbed quickly through their minor league system, making one stop at each level until his New York debut in 1982. He played part of the next season in AAA, then stuck with the Yankees full-time.

Early in the 1984 season, when Daryl Strawberry was capturing New York’s baseball attention for the Mets in Queens, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner made a famous prediction. “You can talk all you want about Strawberry,” he said. “I’ll take Mattingly. He’s the best young talent in baseball today … He’ll be the batting champion in three years.”

Steinbrenner was wrong about one thing: the amount of time it would take Mattingly to reach the top. He won the batting crown that season, hitting .343 to go with 23 home runs and 110 RBI, edging out teammate Dave Winfield by going 4–for-5 on the last day of the season.

The next year was Mattingly’s monster MVP season, and by then, the legend was born. In a 1986 New York Times poll, Mattingly’s peers voted him the best player in the game. Kansas City Hall of Famer George Brett, who knew a thing or two about good hitting himself, said of Mattingly, “If he isn’t the best, I’d like to know who is.”

Over the first six years of his career, he averaged .327, hit 27 homers with 114 RBI, collected five Gold Gloves, and was an All-Star each season, numbers that would put him among the elite today, even by current performance-enhanced standards. But in the first part of the 1990 season, he struggled at the plate, suffering from a back injury. He went on the disabled list for most of the season, and finished at .256, his worst season as a pro.

Mattingly He returned to full-time duty the next season and was able to hit for average, but the power was gone; over his final five years, he averaged just 11 home runs and 68 RBI. That crucial pivot through the lower back and torso that allows a hitter generate power from his legs, directing his full body weight through a swing, was no longer there. By 1995, the always vocal Yankee fans, while outwardly continuing to adore Mattingly, started to whisper that it might be time to ease him out the door.

The end didn’t come quickly, however.

After that final night in Seattle, Mattingly didn’t officially retire, but he didn’t necessarily promise to come back either. “As far as I’m concerned, I will not play this year at all,” he said on a conference call during spring training in 1996. “Unless something really weird happens. You never say never, but I don’t have any intentions of playing this year or coming back halfway or doing anything like that.” The Yankees left the door open for him, but he said he needed to spend time at home with his family. “I knew I didn’t want to play. I’ve always been very selfish about baseball. I’ve been able to do that and block everything else out. At this point, I didn’t want to block everything else. I wanted to be able to hang out with the kids. I wanted to be home. It’s really as simple as that,” he said.

Mattingly spent the 1996 season on the family ranch near Evansville he calls Diamond 5, tending to the horses and spending time with Kim and their three sons, Taylor, Preston, and Jordon. He turned down an offer to play for the Baltimore Orioles that summer, and watched as the Yankees went to the playoffs and beat Atlanta in the World Series. Kim later told The New York Times that Don watched the final game on TV with the boys, but turned it off after the final out, before the celebrations started.

He officially retired on January 22, 1997, at a press conference at Yankee Stadium. “I wasn’t willing to pay the price it was going to take to be able to succeed,” he said, again citing his family and the back problems as his reasons for retiring. “At that point, I knew it was time to step away.” Steinbrenner, effusive again, 13 years after predicting Mattingly would win a batting title, said, “I don’t believe any player on the New York Yankees was ever as great as Don Mattingly in every way during my years as an owner. He was a great athlete and a great player. Some great athletes are not great human beings and vice versa. This man combined all of that.”

Regarding the pain of watching his old teammates finally win a World Series without him, Mattingly said, “I wasn’t cheated because I chose the road. Very honestly, I would do it again. Even if I knew they were going to win. I know I did the right thing.” He was diplomatic that day, acknowledging that the previous fall was painful, but expressing happiness for the team. But that stoicism was perhaps just another example of the trademark humility that made him such a popular player. Kim later hinted that the experience was much more painful than he let on, that it didn’t all end the way they had hoped. “It seemed like baseball just ended in Seattle [after the 1995 playoffs] for us,” she said. ”There just didn’t seem to be any closure. I wanted a storybook ending.”