On a cool, rainy day in April of 2002, I was visiting with Don Mattingly on his farm in Evansville, Ind., for a book I was writing, “Pride of October,” on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Yankees.
It had been nearly seven years since Mattingly had walked away from baseball after the Yankees’ heartbreaking season-ending loss to the Seattle Mariners in the 1995 American League Division Series, and I wasn’t sure how much the wounds still stung within him at the thought of all he’d been deprived of because of the debilitating back injury that had flared up seven years into his career. Throughout the afternoon we reminisced about his 14 years with the Yankees, beginning with that first spring training in 1982 when he and his then-wife Kim drove into camp in Fort Lauderdale in a beat-up Chevy Monte Carlo with their pet cocker spaniel in the back; to the 1984-87 glory years when he was arguably the best player in baseball with a batting title in ’84, an MVP award in ’85, a runner-up MVP in ’86, two hits titles and three of his nine Gold Gloves at first base.
It was not until the end of the day that I dared broach the elephant in the room — the subject he had declined to discuss in the seven years since he’d retired — which was how he was reconciling never getting to a World Series when, the year after he left, the Yankees began a streak of four world championships over the next five seasons?
“You know,” he said, “you can look at it a lot of ways. I got to play for the greatest organization in professional sports which was just a great, great experience and allowed me to do all kinds of things. I remember one day late in ’85, I was standing at first base in Yankee Stadium and looking across the field and saw this guy in the third base box seats holding up a sign that said ‘Don Mattingly, the Chosen One’ and I wondered to myself ‘What does that mean?’
“But sometimes in life, you don’t get what you want. You can work hard for it. You can try your hardest and do everything you think you need to do to get there and sometimes you still don’t get there because you’re not supposed to get there. Maybe I was just chosen to be the one guy who never gets there.”
I confess that, as he spoke, tears welled up in my eyes because I had been with him throughout his entire journey, covered all his early triumphs and his later decline and pain, and I had never heard him express himself so philosophically about anything. He remains beloved in New York because he always conducted himself with class, never used his bad back as an excuse for those good but not great last six years of his career that cost him the Hall of Fame.
So when he finally cut ties forever with the Yankees after Brian Cashman passed him over for the manager job in favor of Joe Girardi in 2007, his legions of friends and fans continued to root for him in his subsequent managerial tenures with the Dodgers and Marlins. He won three division titles for the Dodgers in 2013-2015 and was voted National League Manager of the Year with the Marlins in 2020, but the World Series remained elusive.
And then in early November 2022, Mattingly was sitting home in Evansville, pondering another future without baseball after quitting as Marlins manager, when he got a most unexpected call from Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins offering him the job of bench coach for rookie Toronto manager John Schneider. At first he was reluctant to accept the offer, making it clear to Atkins he would not be coming aboard as a manager-in-waiting in case things didn’t go well for Schneider. But as Atkins explained it: “Experience and credibility are words that get used a lot in professional sports and in corporate worlds, but it’s hard to quantify how valuable that is. I think Donnie’s hiring is something that will have a calming impact and influence here. It will help not only with performance and lack thereof but also with accountability, which will be huge for us.”
Mattingly was then further assured after talking to Schneider, who informed him that, growing up in Princeton, he’d been a huge Yankee fan with pictures on Mattingly on his wall as a kid. As longtime Blue Jays announcer Buck Martinez told me Tuesday: “Everything Ross said was exactly what happened with Donnie who’s had major impact on everything around here — the defense, the professionalism of this team, the emphasis on the hitters putting the ball in play. All of that.”
So as I watched Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman strike out Julio Rodriguez (with Cal Raleigh hovering on deck) for the final out of the pennant-clinching 4-3 Blue Jays victory over the Mariners Monday night, I could only imagine the joy Mattingly must have felt at that moment, maybe even some long pent up revenge from the crushing loss to Seattle 30 years ago.
He was still feeling it Tuesday morning when we talked by phone from Toronto.
“To be honest I still don’t have the words,” Mattingly said. “It’s been a long road but I always believed, although I didn’t think it would be Toronto. But this is a real team, a tough team that’s grown together and shown what can happen when you play good defense, put runners on base, keep making contact. All of that.”
“So can we cross the last thing off your bucket list?” I asked him.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “I still want to win one.”
I wished him well on that, but for me the best story of the 2025 baseball season had just been written. Donnie Baseball finally got there.
