New York Yankees[edit]
After retiring as a player, Mattingly spent seven seasons as a special instructor during Yankees' spring training in Tampa, Florida from 1997 through 2003. Following the 2003 season, the Yankees named Mattingly the hitting coach. He spent three seasons in that role, receiving much praise from the Yankees organization and his players. Under Mattingly, the Yankees set an all-time franchise record with 242 home runs in 2004. After the 2006 season, Mattingly shifted to bench coach, replacing Lee Mazzilli.[18]
After the 2007 season, Mattingly was a finalist for the Yankees' manager position, after Joe Torre declined a one-year contract extension, along with Joe Girardi and Tony Peña. The Yankees offered the managerial position to Girardi, who accepted.[19]
Los Angeles Dodgers[edit]
After not being offered the position of manager for the Yankees, Mattingly joined Torre with the Los Angeles Dodgers as the team's hitting coach. On January 22, 2008, Mattingly was replaced as hitting coach, citing family reasons, instead serving as major league special assignment coach for the Dodgers in 2008.[20] Mattingly succeeded Mike Easler as Dodgers' hitting coach that July.[21] The Dodgers were the National League Runner-up in 2008 and 2009 (losing to the Philadelphia Phillies in both National League championship series), largely behind the bat of mid-season acquisition Manny Ramirez.
In the 2009–10 offseason, Mattingly was a finalist for the managerial position with the Cleveland Indians, for which Manny Acta was eventually hired.[22] When Torre decided to retire at the end of the 2010 season, Mattingly was announced as his replacement.[23] To acquire some managerial experience, Mattingly managed the Phoenix Desert Dogs of the Arizona Fall League in 2010.[24]
Mattingly made his managerial debut on March 31, 2011 by defeating in-state rival and defending champion San Francisco Giants 2-1 at Dodger Stadium.[25] Despite the background of a bitter divorce battle between Dodgers' owner Frank McCourt and his wife that put the fiscal health of the Dodgers into jeopardy, Mattingly managed to take the Dodgers to a winning record that season due to his mentorship of many young players such as MVP candidate Matt Kemp and Cy Young award winner Clayton Kershaw:
In 2013 Mattingly and the Dodgers got off to a rough start due to various injuries and were in last place in May, leading to much media speculation that he would soon be fired.[27] However, once players got healthy the team went on a tear and managed to win the NL West and beat the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS in four games. They then lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS in six games. After the season, Mattingly called out Dodger management for its perceived lack of support of him during the season and said that he wanted a multi-year contract in place in order to return in 2014.[28]Mattingly finished second in the voting for National League Manager of the Year.[29]
Mattingly stated that one of his managerial idols was Tony La Russa. Mattingly admired LaRussa from his playing days with the Yankees in the late 1980s. LaRussa had managed the dominant Oakland Athletics teams of the era. Mattingly recalled that despite the A's superiority to the Yankees, they still played intensely.[26]
On January 7, 2014, Mattingly and the Dodgers agreed on a three-year contract extension for him to remain as manager of the Dodgers.[30]
Managerial record[edit]
- As of May 17, 2015
Team | From | To | Regular season record | Post–season record | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
W | L | Win % | W | L | Win % | |||
Los Angeles Dodgers | 2011 | 378 | 306 | .553 | 6 | 8 | .429 | |
Total | 378 | 306 | .553 | 6 | 8 | .429 |
Legacy[edit]
Don Mattingly's number 23 was retiredby the New York Yankees in 1997. |
Mattingly finished his career with 2,153 hits, 222 home runs, 1,099 RBI, and a .307 lifetime average. He is commonly cited as the best Yankee player to have never played in a World Series. His career had bad timing, as the Yankees lost the World Series the year before he broke into the big leagues and they ended up winning the World Series in the first year of Mattingly's retirement, not to mention the Yankees had the best record in the American League in 1994 before the strike. This World Series drought (1982–1995) was the longest in Yankees history since the start of the Babe Ruth era and it was worsened by the player's strike in 1994, which ended a promising chance for a World Series title.
Buck Showalter, Mattingly's last manager during his playing days and a former teammate in the minor leagues, attributed Mattingly's calmness to the controversies he was subjected to during his time with the Yankees.[31]
The Yankees retired Mattingly's number 23 and dedicated his plaque for Monument Park at Yankee Stadium on August 31, 1997. The plaque calls him "A humble man of grace and dignity, a captain who led by example, proud of the pinstripe tradition and dedicated to the pursuit of excellence, a Yankee forever."[32] Mattingly's jersey number (18) was also retired by the Nashville Sounds in 1999.[33]
Hall of Fame voting[edit]
Mattingly was on the Hall of Fame ballot from 2001 to 2015, never getting enough votes for induction. In his first year, he received 145 votes (28.2%), but this has steadily declined. In 2009, 12% of voters still put him on their ballots.[34] In 2015, Mattingly's eligibility expired after fifteen attempts. He had been grandfathered onto the ballot after the committee restricted eligibility to ten years.
In 1994, Mattingly was inducted into the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame;[35] he led the South Atlantic League with a .358 average and 177 hits in 1980 while leading the Greensboro Hornets to a league title. He was an All-Star and was awarded the league MVP.
Personal life[edit]
Mattingly married Kim Sexton on September 8, 1979; they are now divorced. They have three sons: Taylor, Preston, and Jordon, two of whom attempted careers at professional baseball. Taylor was drafted in the 42nd round (1262nd overall) of the 2003 Major League Baseball Draft by the New York Yankees, and played in 24 games for the Gulf Coast Yankees in the rookie league before an injury cut short his season. After sitting out all of 2004 and 2005, Taylor retired from baseball in 2005 after only 58 professional at bats. Of his eldest son, Don mentioned: "He loved the game, not the lifestyle."[36]
Preston was chosen in the first round (31st overall) of the 2006 Major League Baseball Draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers and was rated as a B- prospect in John Sickels' 2007 Baseball Prospect Book. Sickels noted, "Position a question but has promising tools and bloodlines."[37] Preston was traded to the Cleveland Indians on September 26, 2010, just nine days after his father was announced as the manager of the Dodgers for the 2011 season.[38] He was subsequently released by the Indians at the end of spring training, and re-signed with the Dodgers.[39] On January 11, 2012, the Yankees signed Preston to a minor league contract[40] but they released him again on March 27.[41]Preston is now a sophomore at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He is currently a starting guard for the Lamar Cardinals Basketball team which is an NCAA Division 1 program in the Southland Conference.
Mattingly remarried on December 10, 2010 in his hometown of Evansville, Indiana. The wedding, as well as his managing the Phoenix Desert Dogs of the Arizona Fall League, prevented him from attending the Fall 2010 Winter Meetings.[42]
Business ventures[edit]
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Don Mattingly was the owner of a restaurant in Evansville, Indiana called "Mattingly's 23", after the uniform number he wore for most of his career.[43]
In 2005, Mattingly launched Mattingly Sports, a baseball and softball equipment company, based primarily around the patented V-Grip baseball and softball bats. After watching his kids and their friends struggle to maintain the proper hitting grip, Don, along with co-inventor Jim Wells, created the V-Grip as a way to ensure the proper alignment of the hands and to keep the bat out in the hitter's fingertips. A third founder, Skip Shaw, was brought in to grow the company into a meaningful player in the baseball and softball equipment marketplace. The V-Grip bats have been approved for game play by all of the major, non-professional leagues and associations including Little League Baseball, Babe Ruth (including Ripken Baseball), Pony League, Dixie Youth, AABC, ASA, USSSA, the National Federation of High Schools, and the NCAA.[44]
Popular culture[edit]
Mattingly appeared in a baseball-themed episode of The Simpsons, entitled "Homer at the Bat". In the episode (originally aired on February 20, 1992), team owner Mr. Burns repeatedly demands that Mattingly trim his sideburns, even though Mattingly has no sideburns (and in fact questions Mr. Burns about if he even knows what sideburns are, as well as the fact that Mr. Burns is shown with sideburns). A confused Mattingly returns with 1/3 of his head shaved from one ear over the top of the head to other. The irate Burns cuts him from the team because he would not "trim those sideburns!" As he departs, the exasperated Mattingly says to himself, "I still like him better than Steinbrenner."[45]
Coincidentally, in 1991, before the episode aired but after it was produced, then-Yankees manager Stump Merrill told him that until he cut his hair, he would not play. This was in accord with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner's policy requiring his players to maintain well-kept head and facial hair. Mattingly was sporting a longish or mullet-like hair style, and when he refused to cut it, he was benched.[46][47]
Mattingly has also appeared in public service announcements airing on the Spike TV network advocating fathers spending time with their children as part of the "True Dads" campaign to encourage men to take an active role in their children's lives.[48]
Mattingly is referred to by name in several episodes of Seinfeld. In one memorable episode, his uniform pants split because they were made of 100% cotton at the behest of George Costanza.
Louis Sheehan