COMMENTARY : Mattingly Should Go Out on His Final Note

For one shining month and a little more, Don Mattingly was all he had ever been, all he had ever really hoped to be. It was the September of his career, turning into October and then it was springtime again. But just for that moment.

It was the deception that great athletes can pull off, summoning something wonderful out of their bodies by force of will just when there’s every reason to think there’s nothing left. Sometimes they even fool themselves.

For the last 28 games of the season -- and five more -- Mattingly, on that team that still called him Donnie at the age of 34, played out of his past. That was when he was headed for Cooperstown on rails, until the wheel broke. He played the dream month that got his career into what they now call the postseason. He sanctified his career. The New York Yankees, the team that had been his team for a decade, gave him that showcase and he seized the moment.

He showed he was worthy of it, and then when it was over and his team had lost to Seattle in the last half of the 11th inning of the fifth and final game, with the rockets bursting against the indoor sky of the Kingdome, he was first off the field. He waited at the mouth of the tunnel to the clubhouse to pat his teammates as if they were a reception line and he was thanking each one of them for getting him there.

It was a wonderful bittersweet moment. Let those last 28 games -- and five more -- be his epitaph as a Yankee with all the meaning that had before That Man got his hands on tradition. It can’t ever be that good again.

No man can tell another when his dreams and ambitions are fulfilled and have reached their conclusion. Brooks Robinson said he’d play until there was no team that wanted him. Julius Erving played after he had descended on aching knees to the level of mere human beings. Warren Spahn and Robin Roberts took their great careers back to the minor leagues in hopes of getting back to the top. The light of their careers are no more dimmed by the time of fading than is Willie Mays’ by his falling down in the outfield of the 1973 World Series, irrelevant to his career.

And why should it matter what we want? It’s Mattingly’s life. What we’d like is Ted Williams hitting a home run on Sept. 28, 1960, and not going out on the field again. That was it. No more. The man with the most graceful swing in modern history went out as gracefully as could be.

Mattingly, in his time, was the most graceful Yankee. He had such a graceful last 28 games -- and five more.

Friday, he’s supposed to tell Bob Watson, the new general manager, whether he wants to retire, whether he wants to play for the Yankees any more. No man can tell another when it’s time for him to go, but it’s my business to mind other people’s business. Even this, the Yankees will mess up. Watson, who is new to the environment, will hear from Mattingly and as of Thursday night planned not to comment one way or the other until Monday. That’s not right. Mattingly doesn’t deserve to be hung up out there again. He’s given that team too much.

Step out, kid. It can only get messy there now. Let those people who admired your class and grace have those last 28 games -- and five more -- for the memory glass.

He gave them the last 28 games -- and five more. In the dugout before the final game at Seattle, when Mattingly was somehow doing it all, Buck Showalter spoke wistfully. “He’s going after the ball like I haven’t seen in years,” Showalter, the manager at the time, said.

Mattingly wasn’t feeling for the ball, he was slashing at it. Instead of taking what he was given by the pitchers, he was taking what he wanted. In five games of the playoff that removed the albatross of being the great player who never got to the big playoff, Mattingly hit .417 with four doubles and a home run and six RBI.

In the fourth game he hit two singles and two doubles, one on a headlong slide to beat a throw that had him beat. He was never fast but he was a fine baserunner. Sunday in the sixth inning, when the game was there to be turned, he rapped a bases-loaded double to break the tie and put a 4-2 lead in David Cone’s hands.

For the length of the September comeback, it appeared that Mattingly had one good swing every day when he could pick his spot to risk the frayed cables of his back and save the rest for another day. He loved the very real tension of the race for the wild card. He hit .321 with two homers and 12 RBI, all of them needed. Then, when there was only today to worry about, he swung as if there was no tomorrow. “If he swung like that all season, he’d end up in traction,” Showalter said.

And therein lies the rub. The essence is the long season. He had his argument that he had the eye infection early in the season. His eyes got better but his production didn’t. The decline that had gripped him for several seasons still held him. He deserved to play out the season. As well as he played against Seattle, he struck out three times against Randy Johnson in the third game. With bases full in the sixth inning and a chance to drive Johnson out, Mattingly swung and missed at three sliders, each snapping a little farther outside and low.

It was a barometer: even good pitchers didn’t do that to the good Mattingly. He didn’t, however, deserve the undercutting that comes from That Man at the top. There is no grace at this top. He doesn’t deserve to be derided as Donnie Softball on radio ga-ga, either.

It was the last season on Mattingly’s five-year contract. He made $4.2 million last season. There need be no benefits. If he could take a much smaller salary and a much smaller role, there might be a place for him. If he could, there could be money to shop for Fred McGriff or Tino Martinez, but the really good ones seldom can accept that step down. Those guys can do things the Yankees need, and Mattingly can’t any more. And that role of maybe three games a week and DH is crowded.

Maybe there’s a place for him to fade gracefully some place else. Maybe in Seattle. Maybe with a team that can use a lefty pinch-hitter who can play the field and has little power and an overweight paycheck. Maybe with a team that can learn from his work ethic.

With the Yankees, the last memory should be of him sitting in his locker with the glare-grease under his eyes, smudged perhaps by wiping a tear. And him saying there were things he’d always remember, and “not leaving anything at all out there.”

That should be the end.