Donnie Baseball

Did you hear that?

Millions of Yankee fans just dropped to their knees and bowed their heads. Clearly, they're not interested in hearing the truth, so we'll leave them as they are.

The rest of you can read on, and spend some quality time taking an objective look at Mattingly's True Yankeehood.

First, the numbers.

Three conclusions to draw from this:

1. Mattingly was good - very good. He was certainly one of the better first basemen of his era when he was healthy, and was one hell of a hitter. He set some very impressive records, including tying Dale Long by homering in eight straight games and hitting six grand slams in 1987, and his 22 putouts on July 20th of that year are still tied for the most ever.

2. He wasn't, however, head and shoulders above all of the other guys.

Carew was better (much better), as was Murray, and Cecil Cooper was definitely in the same conversation. I guess he was better than Garvey, although he had about 2000 fewer plate appearances, but this guy was a far better player than Mattingly was. He just didn't play in New York.

Keith Hernandez was certainly as good as Mattingly, if not better, and Mark Grace was close too.

Like I said Mattingly was good - really good. But he wasn't great. Talk to the numbers, and to my hand.

3. Look back at the dedication line from Mattingly's bbref page. This is what we're up against, Pinstripe Worthiers... this guy is so entrenched in the annals of supposed True Yankeehood that people are confusing their admiration for him with love for their dads. Ugh...this is going to be tough.

TRUE YANKEEHOOD QUALITIES:

The Preposterous HOF Argument: +1000 TYP

This is borderline ridiculous. As noted above, Mattingly was a very good first baseman. But let's take a look at the guys currently in Cooperstown who played first base for most of the careers, shall we? Such a list can be found here.

Yeah, OK, maybe, just maybe, he was a little better than Tony Perez. But as you Yankee fans yourselves would say in a similar situation, Perez has rings, and produced big-time in the postseason.

George Kelly was a mistake, and got in 51 years after his final season. So don't go there.

Guys NOT in the HOF who were as good as or better than Mattingly, you ask? Oh, there's plenty...Cooper, Hernandez, Boog Powell.

In summary, word has it that this was written with Mattingly's HOF considerations in mind...he just wasn't that level of a player.

So why is this positive? Well, that's what True Yankees end up with when it's all over for them - an overinflated image in the media and in their own minds of how good they were, just because they played in the Bronx. Just ask Thurman Munson and Derek Jeter. Yeah, I said it.

"Huge in the Clutch" in 1995: +750 TYP

This is what Yankee fans do: they find some pathetically small sample size to bolster their case if and when it works, and then base a player's entire reputation on them. In this case, it's Mattingly's .417 average against the Mariners in 1995 comes from 24 at bats... and in case you're forgetting, Yankee fans, they lost! After winning game 2 in a fifteen-inning classic to go up 2-0 (by the way, Mattingly grounded out in the top of that inning and thus did nothing when it was truly clutch time), the Bombers dropped three in a row to bow out quietly. Hey Yankee fans, it might interest you all to be reminded of the fact that Randy Johnson, who has already been found to be Pinstripe Worthy in a controversial ruling here, won two of those games, striking out Mattingly 3 times in game 3 and 16 Yankees overall in 10 innings.

What about Donnie Baseball's other postseason appearances? Oh, that's right...he didn't have any! Yankee fans delight in labeling Winfield Mr. May, but the truth is that Winfield won two postseason series in pinstripes to Mattingly's none, and, oh yeah, he's got a ring. How does your own medicine taste?

It looks like a paradox, I know, that this futility could be considered helpful to Mattingly's True Yankeehood, but the actions of the fans are what is significant here. They want him to be a Yankee, so they trumpet his meaningless .417 in a series in which they inexcusably choked as a sign of performance, ignoring the fact that Winfield at least got them to the World Series, somewhere the Yankees never got until Mattingly was sitting behind Tino Martinez.

Going through the Old Fogey hitting coach for Torre phase: + 250 TYP



Mattingly actually had a fairly well-publicized spat with the Boss (see below) that strained his True Yankee affiliations, but he's avoided Winfield/Yogi Berra status by hanging out in the dugout with Torre and pretending that Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi listen to Mattingly's advice about their steroid-enhanced swing. Yeah, sure they do. He's even kissing George's ass in interviews now.


T-BROOK called...he wants his look back: + 500 TYP




Those familiar with my writing know that I find TOM BROOKENS' mustache to be far less porntastic than at least one other, but the fact remains that Brookens originated and perfected the post-disco used car salesman/traffic cop chic. The Yankees steal everything, from the Bambino to Raul Mondesi, and this is just another example of the pinstripers pilfering the resources of others and calling them their own. Hell, they even stole T-BROOK himself in 1989! Mattingly even sported the BROOKENS protomullet sanitation engineer look until... (see below)









NON-TRUE YANKEEHOOD QUALITIES:

Refused to cut his hair, against King George's rules: - 500 TYP

"Don Mattingly: 100% ballplayer, 0% bullshit."
- Bill James, The Bill James New Historical Baseball Abstract

Really? How did you arrive there, BJ? Doesn't undermining clubhouse chemistry qualify, especially when it directly interferes with the "Yankee Way"?





And this was back when Steinbrenner was truly The Boss: no one dared to questions to dump and get back together with Reggie, The Stick, or Billy Martin as often as he frequents the local Chinese buffet in St. Pete? Totally unYankeefied.



Zero Championships, 1 Playoff Appearance: -500 TYP

Yankee fans can't have it both ways. Well, they have been, but it stops now. You can't let Captain Dreamboat get credit for the 4 rings and then fail to hold Mattingly unaccountable for a string of failure. As described above, yeah, Winfield performed poorly in October, but Mattingly ultimately didn't accomplish enough in April, May, June, and the rest of the time to get the Yankees to the postseason.

Quit $%(@ing Whining Already About How Much Pain You're In: - 250 TYP



Oh, yes, it's time to talk about the back. Another tremendous hypocrisy: Yankee fans pride themselves on holding pinstripers to the same standard of performance: no rings, hit the highway. If a Yankee does not reach the championship threshold, or at least humiliate the Red Sox, there are supposed to be no valid excuses. So stop kvetching about your aching back. Oh yeah...Mantle WON.

Final score: + 1250 TYP



So that's where we'll leave you, Don: exposed, bruised, and bleeding, but ultimately a True Yankee. You're already in Monument Park, so people can grossly overrate what you brought to the table every day before the Yankees put their $400 million second-place squad out there.

Enjoy him, Yankee fans, no one else would really have fought that hard to get him anyway.

- Silk...