For a decade, Don Mattingly was the best player in baseball and the only reason to watch the worst stretch in Yankees history. He retired without a World Series ring - and remains the most beloved Yankee of his generation anyway.
DID YOU KNOW?
Mattingly's record six grand slams in 1987 were the only grand slams of his entire career. Six slams in one summer, and never another one before or after.
Donnie Baseball came out of Evansville, Indiana, a ninth-round pick who hit his way to the Bronx by September 1982. What followed was the defining run of 1980s Yankees baseball - which is a complicated compliment, because the 1980s Yankees won nothing.
The Peak
Start in 1984. Mattingly and teammate Dave Winfield fought for the American League batting title to the season's final day, Mattingly finishing at .343 to Winfield's .340 to become the first Yankees left-handed batting champion in decades. A year later, 1985: American League MVP, hitting .324 with 35 home runs and 145 RBIs - the most RBIs by a Yankee since the war years - carrying Billy Martin's final contending club to 97 wins.
Then 1986: a .352 average, 238 hits and 53 doubles, all franchise or league-leading marks. Then the summer of 1987, when Mattingly homered in eight straight games - tying a major league record - hit 10 home runs during the streak, and swatted those six grand slams.
He was not just a bat. Mattingly won nine Gold Gloves at first base, and in 1987 posted a .996 fielding percentage, then a record. He could beat you three ways before the seventh-inning stretch.
The Timing
Here is the heartbreak at the center of it all: Mattingly's prime landed exactly in the Yankees' championship desert. The franchise won the World Series in 1978 and again in 1996. Mattingly's entire career, 1982 to 1995, fit precisely in the gap - the only Yankee era with no rings at all.
His back went in 1990, and the MVP seasons stopped. But the stubbornness did not. In 1995, at 34 and a shell of his peak self, he finally got his postseason - the first Yankees playoff appearance of his career - and hit .417 in the Division Series against Seattle. The Yankees lost in five games. He retired that December.
The Number
The Yankees retired number 23 in August 1997. He is the only Yankee to have his number retired without winning a World Series with the team, which tells you something about the franchise's standards - and something more about him. In 14 seasons he hit .307 with 2,153 hits, and he did all of it the right way, on bad teams, in a town that noticed.
A generation of Yankees fans learned to love the team in its leanest years, and they learned it by watching Don Mattingly. The dynasty that arrived in 1996 belonged to other players. But it was built on the credibility he kept alive when nobody else was watching.
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Sources: Baseball-Reference.com (Don Mattingly career statistics and awards) · Wikipedia (Mattingly biography, records and 1995 postseason) · MLB.com (Mattingly player page)
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