TORONTO — As the last century came to a close, New York Yankees fans wanted for very little: They won four World Series titles from 1996-2000, establishing an extended era of greatness that was sorely lacking from 1978 through the mid-’90s.
Yet there was always one unfinished task: Winning one for Donnie Baseball.
Don Mattingly, who played gallantly for some terrible teams, missed that boat by one year, his career ending in 1995 when the Seattle Mariners walked off his last Yankees squad on Edgar Martinez’s Game 5 double in the American League Division Series.
His 2,153 hits, his nine Gold Gloves and six All-Star appearances had no currency in October, and he retired with just that one playoff dalliance.
That’s why there was a different emotion beyond the standard championship jubilation Oct. 21 at Rogers Centre after of the Toronto Blue Jays’ 4-3 victory over those Mariners in Game 7 of this American League Championship Series.
Mattingly is 64 now, twice moved on from managerial positions in Los Angeles and Miami and now serving as Blue Jays manager John Schneider’s trusted bench coach. And after so many decades in this game, Donnie Baseball is going to the World Series at last.
Mattingly, humbled and honored to be headed to the Fall Classic to take on the Dodgers, knows he’s carried with him the hopes of Yankee fans wanting to see him get his due.
‘I heard it over the years, right? And you downplay it because you never know,’ Mattingly tells USA TODAY Sports, surrounded by family on the Rogers Centre turf. ‘There’s been a lot of guys who don’t get here, that don’t get a chance to get to the World Series.
‘Been so close. Was on the 2004 (Yankees coaching) staff that had a 3-0 lead. Boston comes from behind. Seattle knocks us out in ’95. We had a 2-0 lead.
‘You know how momentum changes things.’
This time, though, it was in Toronto’s favor.
They fell in a 2-0 hole, won the first two games in Seattle before a heart-wrenching Game 5 loss forced them to win Games 6 and 7 back home. That they did, as manager John Schneider pushed past the second guessing from Game 5 and pushed every proper button in the winner-take-all Game 7.
Schneider, 45, had Mattingly’s iconic Hit Man poster on his New Jersey bedroom wall as a kid. Now, he’s his boss, technically. But it’s a truly symbiotic relationship.
‘With everything that he’s done for me over the past three years, you want to share that with him,’ says Schneider. ‘He’s been rock solid steady for me, as has everyone on the staff. But I think our relationship over the past three years has really grown to where we really know one another pretty well.’
In Schneider, Mattingly sees a fearless leader, even if Schneider lacks the playing pedigree.
‘It’s what I came here for,’ says Mattingly. ‘Just to be a little part of that is a good feeling. He’s so smart, he’s aggressive, he’ll gamble. A really, really good manager.
‘He just moves on. He makes decisions and he learns and he goes. There’s things he does over the course of a year, or two years ago and says, I’m not doing that again. He follows his heart. He’s great.’
Now, Mattingly will have a shot at the ring that eluded him as a player. Though, truth be told, his decades in the game told him months ago that these 94-win Blue Jays had something special.
‘Such a good feeling,’ he says. ‘I’ve been telling people for about two months now, we’re gonna win it. You can feel it with this team. They’ve been a team all along.
‘As a coach, the best thing you can say is you trust guys. And you can trust this team.’