Here we retell a story that has been told and retold and retold without an ending that most Yankees fans will find appropriate.
Don Mattingly has been in the Hall of Fame 18 times and been snubbed 18 times.
Will it be lucky No. 19, symbolic of a 19th round pick by the Yankees?
The baseball world will find out on Sunday, when Mattingly will be one of eight candidates the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, which meets during the Winter Meetings in Orlando, will consider for induction.
“Donnie Baseball” needs 12 votes – four more than three years ago – to achieve baseball immortality.
The seven other players on the ballot are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Dale Murphy, Gary Sheffield and Fernando Valenzuela.
Voters, including Hall of Famers, MLB executives and veteran media members/historians, can select up to three players.
The last time this group met, Fred McGriff received 16 votes to gain enshrinement, while Mattingly finished second with eight.
Murphy, a contemporary associated with Mattingly, received six votes.
Due to a major rule change this year, candidates who receive fewer than five votes will be ineligible in the next cycle.
Any candidate who does not receive at least five votes twice would be permanently off the ballot.
If he reaches 75 percent with those four extra votes, Mattingly’s journey to Cooperstown would last a quarter of a century, an aspiring member of the Class of 2026 that first appeared on a ballot in 2001.
On his first attempt, the Yankees icon received 28.2 percent of the vote, which became his highest in 15 years in the popular vote.
Subsequent attempts through the Eras Committee, which meets every three years, have ended similarly.
“I hope I get in,” Mattingly said recently on “The Show with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman” podcast. “It’s clear that everyone would like to be recognized for that.”
Mattingly’s numbers remain the same, but perhaps his post-career years as a manager and coach — the Hall of Fame asks voters to consider candidates’ “contributions to the game” — will help.
Perhaps that will be the case with a different group of voters, more time and more perspective thanks to a playing career with notable highlights and a relatively short duration that has kept him out of Cooperstown.
By now, most of the case for Mattingly is well documented: from 1984 to 1989, he was among the best players in the sport.
In that six-year span, he won one batting title, one MVP, finished second, fifth, seventh and 15th in voting in four other seasons and averaged more than 26 home runs and 114 RBIs with a .902 OPS — all while playing all-time defense at first base.
He was the leader (and, from 1991, captain) of the Yankees teams, which he also ran.
But a degenerative disc in his back had sapped much of his strength in the 1990s.
Mattingly averaged fewer than 10 home runs per season from 1990 to 1995.
The underlying issues forced him into early retirement, ending his playing career at just 34 years old before the Yankees dynasty began.
His senior season became his only trip to October – and he hit .417 with a home run and four doubles against the Mariners.
“I decided to stop a little early,” Mattingly said in the podcast. “I probably had three or four, maybe five years left in me. I made some decisions based on family that I don’t regret at all.”
His cumulative numbers — six All-Star Games, nine Gold Gloves, 2,153 hits, 222 home runs, 1,099 RBIs and putouts, plus a .307 lifetime average and .830 OPS — weren’t enough for the voters of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America from 2001 to 2015.
Perhaps the way the game swings, with so many modern prospects relying on spikes rather than length, will matter to Mattingly.
Perhaps this also applies to a larger CV.
As a manager, he won three straight NL West division titles with the Dodgers from 2013 to 2015; he led the Marlins for seven seasons and took home the Manager of the Year award in 2020; he was the Blue Jays’ bench coach from 2023 through this past season, including his first World Series appearance.
An unknown variable is the Eras Committee, whose members change.
Sunday features legends Fergie Jenkins, Jim Kaat, Juan Marichal, Tony Perez, Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell and Robin Yount; Major League executives Mark Attanasio, Doug Melvin, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Tony Reagins and Terry Ryan; former statistician and historian Steve Hirdt and media members Tyler Kepner and Jayson Stark.
Will they favor strong, if relatively short, careers like Mattingly’s and Murphy’s or higher profile superstars with PED baggage like Bonds and Clemens?
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