For those of us who entered the portal of puberty in the '80s - the wildly rare decade when the Yankees didn't win a World Series - our walls were either lathered with our father's heroes or an exorbitant number of Don Mattingly posters. Most of you likely recall the "Hit Man" poster with Mattingly in a zoot suit, gripping a bat across his breast like a Tommy gun.
We know how good - how great - Mattingly was, and how his career fell just short of the Hall of Fame because of a balky back. Yet he just became even greater decades removed from his playing days because of his brain, not his bat.
Frank Robinson, Don Baylor, Joe Torre, and Kirk Gibson have long been the only four who won AL or NL MVP Award as a player and later won an AL or NL Manager of the Year Award – but Mattingly became the fifth member of that club last season.
Donnie Baseball isn’t just a fun euphemism; the great first baseman has the divergent distinctions of those accomplishments while also being the only truly iconic career New York Yankees player who never won a World Series. Every other one bagged a ring before he bowed out except Mattingly, who was so good he secured the aforementioned sobriquet from the high priest of the sport himself, Kirby Puckett.
Mattingly is hovering around the baseball consciousness because he won NL Manager of the Year as skipper of a club left for dead, one that traded Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich for pennies on the dollar. The Marlins are one of those teams we tolerate because it doesn’t cost us anything. They are simply an extra stat in the standings. Until lately.
Despite the galactic gaps in their rosters, the Marlins reached the playoffs while scoring 253 runs, almost 100 fewer than the NL East champ Atlanta Braves, and in fact there was a 101-run differential between the Braves (+61) and Marlins (-40). And despite the chasmal differences in talent, the Braves won just four more games and finished with four fewer road wins (16) than Miami had (20). In fact, out of 30 MLB teams, only the World Series champion Dodgers won more road games (22) than Miami.
Mattingly is the perfect man to manage this team. To those of us who remember his impossible mixture of supernatural talent and low-key regularity, he was, literally, impossible to hate. It would be like rooting against Jimmy Stewart if he were a first baseman. Mattingly’s singular sin was his desire to wear a mustache across his lip, against the old-school orders of George Steinbrenner.
You don't have to be a loser to admit you miss him. Whether it was his nuclear bat, his Spider-Man glove, or his mullet, there was something refreshingly Riverdale about Mattingly, so fitting in Archie's circle since he played in the Bronx.
Another former Yankee, Derek Jeter, is running things in Miami, but there’s a big difference between them: Jeter seemed born for stardom, but Mattingly was born for baseball. One has it all. One deserves it all. And maybe, together, they can win it all.
Follow Jason Keidel on Twitter: @JasonKeidel
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