Don Mattingly’s 30th anniversary of his final game playing first base was a big one as he reached the World Series for the first time, doing so in his capacity as John Schneider’s bench coach with the Toronto Blue Jays.
He was two outs away from winning the title that eluded him in over a decade with the Yankees, who won four titles in the first five seasons of his retirement following a career that ended with the Yankees’ crushing loss in the Division Series in the Kingdome to the Seattle Mariners.
Two days after Mattingly’s title dreams were dashed by the Los Angeles Dodgers tying Game 7 of World Series with one out in the ninth and winning it on a home run by Will Smith and a series-ending double play by Alejandro Kirk, he was included on the eight-person player ballot for consideration by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee to be possibly inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Mattingly will need 75 percent of the votes from a 16-person panel, who announces the results on Dec. 7 – coincidentally the 30th anniversary of the Yankees acquiring Tino Martinez from the Mariners to succeed Mattingly at first base.
Mattingly is on this ballot for the second time after getting eight in 2022 when Fred McGriff was elected. His inclusion on this method is occurring after his Hall of Fame results on the BBWAA ballot peaked at 28.2 percent.
The high-water mark for Mattingly on the BBWAA ballot occurred in his first year of eligibility in 2001 when the Yankees were coming off four titles in five years and missed a fifth in six seasons by Mariano Rivera allowing Luis Gonzalez’s walk-off single in Arizona.
There has always been sentiment for Mattingly, who hit .307 with 222 homers with 2,153 hits. Mattingly is currently tied for 208th on the all-time hits list with Victor Martinez. Of anyone below him with at least 2,000 hits in the Hall of Fame are Yogi Berra (2,150), Mike Piazza (2,127), Joe Mauer (2,127), Duke Snider (2,116), Minnie Minoso (2,113), John Ward (2,107), Arky Vaughn (2,103), Gary Carter (2,092), Harmon Killebrew (2,086), Scott Rolen (2,077), Chuck Klein (2,076), Deacon White (2.067), George Kell (2,054), Johnny Bench (2,048), Bobby Doerr (2,042), Earl Averill (2,019), Bill Mazeroski (2,016), Johnny Mize (2,011) and Dave Bancroft (2,004).
Virtually all of those players had longer careers than Mattingly. Mattingly batted .323 through his first 1,015 games and was up to 1,300 hits through the 1989 season.
In 1990 the back problems resulted him playing in 102 games for a 95-loss outfit and his career average dropped to .317. He only had one more .300 season when he batted .304 in the strike-shortened 1994 season and the other three seasons saw him hit at least .288.
This year would be an appropriate year for Mattingly to get into the Hall of Fame since it was his 30th anniversary of his playing career ended.
For those who believe in symbolism there is plenty to go around for Mattingly. He advanced to his second ALCS in any capacity be celebrating at Yankee Stadium. Then he beat the Mariners while coaching Toronto and doing so in the same city where the Yankees clinched their first playoff berth since 1981 on the final weekend of the 1995 season.
Then he helped John Schneider manage the World Series against the Dodgers, whom he coached from 2008 through 2010 with Joe Torre and then managed from 2011 through 2015 before Dave Roberts took over.
In 2008, Mattingly fell three wins shy of getting the World Series with the Dodgers blowing a two-run lead in the sixth inning in Game 1 and doing the same in Game 4.
He did not get back to the NLCS until losing a six-game series to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2013. In that series, the Dodgers lost the opener on a single by Carlos Beltran in the 13th and were shutout twice.
The recently completed thriller of a Fall Classic was Mattingly’s closest chance as part of a team who genuinely cared about each other, things that are evidenced by Bo Bichette briefly hugging him in the dugout after the final out and from comments made by several players such as Ernie Clement and Chris Bassitt.
Mattingly’s case always remains an interesting discussion topic and him getting in would be symbolic for it occurring in the same year as his first World Series chance and 30th anniversary of his final game as a player.
