Mattingly’s Biggest Problem Is His Timing

Q: What do Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Don Mattingly have in common?

A: All three were captain of the Yankees.

Q: What do Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Don Mattingly not have in common?

A: Babe Ruth was in 10 World Series, Gehrig was in seven. Don Mattingly has been in none.

Don Mattingly has never even been in a post-season playoff game in his nearly 12 years as a Yankee, a bit of historic injustice that numbs the minds and makes baseball fans re-scan the records to see if a mistake has been made.

A mistake has been made, all right. You see, being on the Yankees is supposed to guarantee an almost annual appearance in ye olde Fall Classic.

From their first (1921) to their last (1981), the New York Yankees were in (count ‘em!) 33 World Series. In fact, they were in 27 World Series between 1921 and 1964.

Yogi Berra was in 14 World Series, no less, in his 19-year career. Mickey Mantle was in 12. Joe DiMaggio was in 10, Bill Dickey was in eight.

The Yankees are supposed to come with the World Series attached. Wear the pinstripes, play in October. Every October.

It isn’t as if Don Mattingly were less than a great Yankee. Like his predecessor, Gehrig, of whom they made a movie by that title, he’s also “The Pride Of The Yankees.”

What do you want--home runs? Don Mattingly holds the major league record for grand slam home runs in a season--six. He shares the major league record for consecutive-game homers. He homered in eight consecutive games in 1987. In two of those games, he hit two homers. He led the league in batting one year. He was MVP another.

So, why did the Yankees hit a drought when Mattingly took up Lou Gehrig’s position (first base) all those years ago?

Mattingly did most of the things the great old Yankees did. Hit for average, hit with power, hit for damaging effect. In 1985, he drove in 145 runs. Not since 1949 (when Ted Williams drove in 159) had anyone driven home that many. And no one has done it since.

He batted over .300 six years in a row, he got over 200 hits three years in a row. He should be one of those monuments in center field at Yankee Stadium. But he might go down in history with Ernie Banks and Rod Carew, near-unanimous Hall of Fame players who never got to the Big Show.

Mattingly is as mystified as anybody. He sat in a dugout at Anaheim Stadium the other night and looked back on a career that merited half-a-dozen World Series and certainly a playoff or three and shook his head.

“I still think it will happen,” he insists. “There’s time. Things will fall into place.” Maybe so. But there may be something at work here which will not respond to a triple off the fence, a 10-homer outburst in eight days or even the fact that Mattingly may be the most stylish first base fielder since Hal Chase (he once made 22 putouts in a nine-inning game) and that he is the third- hardest to strike out in the league.

He’s never missed a team bus or a flight, never starred in a bar fight. He’s missed a few fastballs but usually that was due to back spasms (and currently an infection in his right eye which has the effect of giving his blurred vision a choice of two or three balls to hit when he’s at the plate and he has to figure out which is the real one and which the illusion.)

He takes his captain role seriously. He has been captain longer than any Yankee since Gehrig who held the rank from 1935 until his death in 1941. Ruth, it is interesting to note, was captain for less than a week--from May 20, 1922 until May 25, 1922. Seems the Babe threw dirt on an umpire and climbed into the stands after a fan. He was busted back to private.

Mattingly does not stone umps or climb into stands to attack fans. In fact, he is concerned currently at the alienation of the fans. “It seems like we could get together as an industry--players and owners. We have a common destiny and we should be partners, not adversaries,” he says.

It sounds as if Captain Mattingly could be Commissioner Mattingly.

He has a higher lifetime average (.309) than either Yogi Berra or Mickey Mantle. He has over 2000 hits, 1000 RBI’s and 200 homers. He’ll make the Hall of Fame, all right. But will he make a World Series?

The impression he is bucking a stacked deck grows, and may be seen in the fact the Yankees last year were leading the league with 70 victories when the strike aborted the season and wiped out the post-season and the Series.

If Mattingly seems hoodoo-ed, a case could be made. The Yankees of antiquity always had a surrounding lineup of equal threats. Murderer’s Row, Bronx Bombers, Five O’Clock Lightning. Ruth had Gehrig and Dickey and Combs and Lazzeri. DiMaggio had Dickey too, and Keller and Henrich and Selkirk. Mantle had Maris and Berra and McDougald and Mize.

Mattingly does not want to make it sound as though he were surrounded by Death Row. “There were some years there when we had [Don] Baylor and [Dave] Winfield where I got good pitches to hit always. I mean, they weren’t going to walk me with those guys coming up,” he points out.

But, the days when the Yankees were the lords of baseball have long gone. Royalty isn’t what it once was. Mattingly may have been a generation too late.

He doesn’t think so. His biological clock has not run out. He’s just 34 and could have five or six years left--if the eye responds to treatment.

Even one-eyed, Mattingly (current average .324) is hardly anybody’s “out” man. Rival managers take no comfort in his affliction. Grimly noted Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann the other night, “Mattingly? I wouldn’t feel confident if he went up there blindfolded.”

But, it’s not Mattingly’s loss, it’s the World Series’. Picture a World Series without Ruth, Gehrig, DiMag, Mantle or Berra and you get a World Series without Don Mattingly who belongs in one as surely as any of them.