He’s the Kind of Player Only a Steinbrenner Could Dislike

He is in his fourth full season with the New York Yankees, and his statistics are already the stuff of legends. Don Mattingly seems on the way to a niche in the Hall of Fame and a monument in center field at Yankee Stadium.

That is, if his annoyance with owner George Steinbrenner doesn’t reach the monumental point where he would ask to be traded. Or decide to become a free agent after the 1989 season.

Mattingly, the humble Hoosier, seems to be having an increasingly difficult time maintaining his basically pacifist demeanor. He has suggested that he doesn’t expect to end his career in New York and will probably have more to say about it when the 1987 race is over.

Now, as injuries and the calendar work against the Yankees in their battle to survive in the American League East, Mattingly seems reluctant to talk at all. He consented to a brief interview, but only if the writer avoided controversial questions.

Inevitably, however, the question of Steinbrenner and his influence on the first baseman’s future came up.

Will he ask to be traded?

“At this time, I can’t see it happening,” Mattingly said. “But I can’t predict the future. I don’t know what my frame of mind will be down the line.

“I like New York. I don’t really want to leave. I wouldn’t have bought a home there if I knew I was going to leave. Sometimes it can get frustrating. Sometimes the owner can put the squeeze on you. I don’t agree with everything that happens, but I’ve contributed to that situation, too.

“You’ve got to get it off your chest and then forget about it or else you’ll go crazy.”

Mattingly generally responds by driving the opposition crazy. Steinbrenner’s meddling; the $1.975-milllion arbitration victory that the owner predicted would be like a monkey on the player’s back; injuries to his wrist and back--nothing stops the succession of hits rattling from that coiled stance.

A 1986 New York Times poll of the 624 major league players resulted in Mattingly’s being voted baseball’s best player. Detroit Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson put it this way recently:

“Eric Davis is the most exciting player now, and Bo Jackson is the greatest athlete I’ve ever seen in baseball, though we don’t know yet if he’s a great baseball player. But Mattingly is head and shoulders the class of this game.”

The class of the game? The best player? Does Mattingly think of himself in those terms?

“Not at all,” he said. “Maybe if I did, I’d be better than I am. I mean, it’s hard to say that any one player is better than another. You tell me that Andre Dawson is the best player, and I’ll tell you that Jack Clark is. You tell me that George Bell is, and I’ll tell you that Mike Schmidt is.

“In any given year, one guy can be the best. But the true test is over a number of years, and I feel like that’s where my strength is. I want to be consistent. I want to play with injuries. I want to be the type person that the manager can count on both on and off the field. I’d rather be able to put together a lot of good years than be remembered for one or two awesome years.

“I mean, I don’t consider myself a great player as much as a worker, an everyday player. I don’t even know what the word star means except that I know you can establish a lot of magnitude by what you do off the field if you have a personality for it like Gary Carter does.

“I’m sure that if I went out and did all the commercials I could do, I’d be looked at in a different way, too, but you have to do what you’re comfortable with. You have to be yourself. I’m not flashy. I’m not that type. I’m not comfortable going out and telling people what they should do and what they should buy.

“People put too much emphasis on the opinion of athletes anyway. For me, I’m comfortable playing baseball. I know I can do it well. I’m at home on the field. I know that if I prepare mentally every day I have the ability to beat the game, that the numbers will be there.

“No one can be 100% ready every day, but you don’t catch a guy like Wade Boggs coming up short too often. He may lose a battle here and there, but he wins the war because he’s ready.”

Boggs adheres to a diet of chicken, and other superstitions. Mattingly adheres only to hard work. The batting cage is his laboratory.

The story is told of an off-season visit that he made to Yankee Stadium, where he was shown a season ticket brochure adorned by pictures of past and present Yankee stars. Mattingly noticed that his front leg was in an incorrect hitting position and asked that the picture be replaced. He is more of a perfectionist than a natural.

“If I am a natural, it’s because I work hard at my hitting,” he said. “I don’t know any other way. The only real athletic gifts I feel I was blessed with are quick hands and good eyes. When I’m seeing the ball like I should, I’m seeing it early. I’m seeing it right out of the pitcher’s hands, picking up the seams and all. I don’t look for any particular pitch, only hard stuff. Then it’s all reaction.”

Mattingly attended Memorial High School in Evansville, Ind. He was a pitcher and first baseman in baseball, a quarterback and all-state defensive back in football and a “quick, white guard” in basketball. He was a Rod Carew fan then, but obviously not on the same plateau.

The Yankees, as did others, figured he was headed for college and didn’t draft him until the 19th round in 1979. He didn’t go to school, though. Instead, he signed with the Yankees for a reported $22,000 bonus.

He hit .349 at Oneonta that summer, .358 at Greensboro in 1980 and has never hit lower than .300 in any of his eight pro seasons, which is not to say that he hasn’t changed as a hitter.

A Carew-type who seldom pulled the ball, Mattingly has become a genuine power threat and run producer. He credits the use of weights and the influence of Lou Piniella, initially his batting instructor and now his manager. Mattingly said that Piniella removed the loop from what had been an inside-out swing and taught him how to shift his weight, giving him pull potential.

In 1985, at 24, he hit 35 homers and drove in 145 runs and was voted the American League’s most valuable player. He had totals of 31 and 113 last year, when he batted .352, set a Yankee record for hits at 238, broke Lou Gehrig’s league record for doubles with 53, led the majors in total bases and slugging percentage, led the league’s first baseman in fielding percentage and legitimately felt he deserved to be MVP again. Instead, Roger Clemens, the Boston Red Sox pitcher, won the award.

Where does Mattingly go from a year like that?

Merely on his continuing search for consistency.

“I’m confident of what I can do, but I don’t believe in looking back,” he said. “I’ve had a good year everywhere I’ve played, but I don’t believe that automatically means I’ll have a good year every year. I have to keep working at it, staying ready. I haven’t gotten satisfied with myself.”

Although he has missed 23 games with injuries, Mattingly has 23 home runs and 83 RBIs. He is third in the league in batting at .331. Going into Monday night’s game against the Angels, he was fourth in doubles with 31, fifth in slugging percentage at .585 and eighth in on-base percentage at .394. He has tied a single-season Yankee record by hitting four grand slams and tied a major league record by homering in eight straight games.

The athlete he now admires and strives to emulate is Julius Erving. It is not that Mattingly, the former quick, white guard who is allegedly 6 feet, still has hopes of dunking a basketball, it’s that his summers with Steinbrenner have taught him the need for composure, which he believes Erving personified.

“I think about that every time I feel myself losing control,” Mattingly said.

After his recent exchange with Steinbrenner, Mattingly said he expected the owner to run him out of New York, and Steinbrenner said: “It won’t be the end of the Yankees if and when Don Mattingly leaves.”

Where did it start? Mattingly had to be disturbed, of course, by the owner’s reaction to his arbitration victory.

“He’s like all the rest of ‘em now,” Steinbrenner said at the time. “He can’t play Jack Armstrong of Evansville, Ind., anymore. He goes into the category of modern player with agent looking for the bucks. Money means everything to him.”

In addition, Mattingly reportedly bristled at the owner’s unfounded insinuations that clubhouse horseplay led to the back injury that put him on the disabled list in June, and at the owner’s claim that his home run streak was a distraction to the club.

He has more than bristled at Steinbrenner’s tendency to rip players in defeat and to juggle the roster, jeopardizing team chemistry and stability.

How much longer a Yankee? Time will tell. It will also establish his place in Yankee lore.

A star?

“I’m a hardballer,” Mattingly said. “I’m not out here to make money, no matter what anyone thinks. I want to be paid what I feel I’m worth, but it’s never been my goal to make a million. I want to win. I want the opportunity to play and show what I can do. I want those 550 at-bats a year.

“The one constant is that I know I can play, I know I can hit. That doesn’t change for me no matter if I’m playing in New York or somewhere else. The white lines are always out there for me.”

DON MATTINGLY’S STATISTICS

6-0, 175. Born 4/20/61 in Evansville, Ind. Bats: L Throws: L

Year Club Avg. G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB 1982 Columbus .315 130 476 67 150 24 2 10 75 50 24 1 Yankees .167 7 12 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1983 Columbus .340 43 159 35 54 11 3 8 37 29 14 2 Yankees .283 91 279 34 79 15 4 4 32 21 31 0 1984 Yankees .343 153 603 91 207 44 2 23 110 41 33 1 1985 Yankees .324 159 652 107 211 48 3 35 145 56 41 2 1986 Yankees .352 162 677 117 238 53 2 31 113 53 35 0 1987 Yankees .331 105 417 73 138 31 2 23 83 45 23 1

Club Avg. G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB M.L. Totals .331 676 2640 422 875 191 13 116 484 216 164 4