CLEARWATER, Fla. — Moments after Mookie Betts had just completed the game-ending double play, Don Mattingly stood alone atop the Blue Jays dugout, leaning on the railing and staring disconsolately out at the field where the visiting Dodgers were celebrating. A couple of minutes later, Bo Bichette approached him from behind and hugged him for what looked like as hard as he could.
This was the everlasting image of what many people have called the greatest World Series of them all. The 64-year-old Mattingly, who had waited 43 years before finally reaching his first World Series, now experiencing one final heartbreak before letting it all go.
“I was done,” Mattingly was saying the other day. “There was nothing more.”
And yet, here he was, donned in a Philadelphia Phillies uniform in between shagging balls at first base and periodically huddling with Phillies manager Rob Thomson for whom he will serve as bench coach this season. So what happened in the almost two months between that devastating last night of the World Series in Toronto and that early January morning in Philadelphia when Mattingly was introduced as Thomson’s new bench coach? A lot of people had assumed it was an inevitable development since Mattingly’s son Preston had a year earlier been elevated from player development director to general manager of the Phillies. But according to Mattingly it was not Preston, but rather Louie, his 11-year-old other son by his second wife, Lori, who convinced him not to walk away from baseball.
“Louie kept saying ’you can’t quit, Dad. What you gonna do with yourself?’” Mattingly said, “and the more he kept pressing me, the more I realized how much I would miss baseball, no matter how it ended in Toronto. I likened it to being a farmer. You start farming 5,000 acres, then it’s down 500 acres and all of a sudden you’re down to a garden — and then I got a call from [Phillies President of Baseball Operations] Dave Dombrowski telling me that they wanted someone with managing experience to work with ‘Thomps’ who was already a friend since our days together with the Yankees. It made so much sense and would be so great to be around and working with Preston every day.”
As both Dombrowski and Mattingly conceded, however, there’s a delicate dichotomy from being in the clubhouse with the players every day and having a relative in the front office.
“You never want to have the impression that stuff that happens in the clubhouse gets upstairs,” said Dombrowski, “but Donnie is just so respected that wasn’t a concern.”
Added Mattingly: “I believe the clubhouse is a sacred trust.”
Ask any of the players in Toronto and, to a man, they will tell you there was no one who brought more professionalism to the organization than Mattingly when he was hired as a “special assistant” coach to manager John Schneider three years ago.
“We had a lot of talent on that team,” said recently retired Blue Jays broadcaster Buck Martinez. “The one thing missing was someone who showed them how to win. That’s what Donnie did, just by his everyday presence.”
At the press conference introducing Mattingly as his bench coach, Thomson illuminated on that: “As great as our staff is,” he said, “we didn’t have a guy who’s been a star in the big leagues.”
I asked Mattingly about his Toronto experience and especially last season in which he was finally rewarded with a World Series. Sure, it ended in disappointment but…”When it comes to my greatest season, it was right up there,” he said. “That was a special group. The way they played as a team, grinding it out the way they did, day in and day out. And the reason I can say that is because we knew — we could feel — everyone was rooting for us in the World Series.”
“The greatest World Series in history except the wrong team won,” I said, half-jokingly.
“Right,” said Mattingly, smiling.
He hopes Philadelphia can be an equally satisfying experience even if the Phillies, with potentially a lack of starting pitching depth, figure to have a tougher road to the World Series than the Blue Jays did last year. Then again, the same thing could be said about these Phillies that was said about Blue Jays: A lot of talent but maybe they just need to be shown how to win.
“This is a good team, a real good team,” said Mattingly. “I’m just here to provide an extra pair of eyes for Rob, as a guy sitting next to him who’s managed before. It’s a long season and anything can happen. I just know this was the perfect spot for me, working with Preston and Rob. Otherwise, I’d have been home hanging out with Louie and even he didn’t want that.”
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
In the recently completed Heritage Auction of Tom Seaver’s memorabilia, his 1969 World Championship ring — the Holy Grail of Mets memorabilia — sold for $854,122. I am told that Mets owner Steve Cohen tried feverishly to get it for the Mets, bidding over $800,000 but the winner just kept bidding and bidding. It was the third highest price ever paid for a sports championship ring. In addition, Seaver’s Hall of Fame induction plaque went for $170,000 and his 1967 NL Rookie of the Year award for $50,020. I’m sure Seaver would be sickened at the fact of some rich fan walking around brandishing his ’69 ring. Before he developed dementia, Seaver had pledged to donate all of his memorabilia to the Hall of Fame which already has his two Cy Young awards. No word on how much his Hall of Fame ring — which he wore almost to his dying day — went for, but his family is said to have reaped more than $1.8 million from the nearly 200 items in the auction.
