Yankees great Don Mattingly still has his eyes on World Series

There’s one member of the Toronto Blue Jays who did not get booed at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night during ALDS Game 3.

That would be Blue Jays bench coach Don Mattingly, the former Yankees great.

No Yankees fan will be happy if the Blue Jays finish off the Yankees in the ALDS. But one tiny silver lining could be that it will keep alive the dreams of the 64-year-old Mattingly making it to World Series for the first time in his six-decade professional baseball career.

“Absolutely,” Mattingly told Newsday in the Blue Jays dugout before Game 3. “I think every year you go to spring training, you think about getting there, right? That's why you keep doing it.”

Mattingly didn’t get there when he played for the Yankees from 1982-’95. He only got to the postseason once, in 1995, when he hit .417 with a home run and six RBIs in the Yankees’ five-game loss to Seattle in the ALDS.

Mattingly, his back ravaged by injury, retired after that series. The Yankees began a dynasty the next year that included four World Series titles in five years.

Nor did he make it as a Yankees coach under Joe Torre from 2004-’07, or as a coach and manager with the Dodgers, or as manager of the Marlins, or as a coach with Toronto.

But he’s still got a shot in 2025 as the Blue Jays went into Tuesday with a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

“It's been a fun team up to this point, and it's really going to be a fun team no matter what happens,” Mattingly said. “But this is a good group. This is a team, and they play good baseball. They stay together. It's a fun group to be around.”

Buck Showalter, who was Mattingly’s teammate in the Yankees minor leagues and then his manager in the bigs, told Newsday in a telephone interview: “I’ve seen some bad baseball people who were part of some championship teams. Not ‘bad’ — what’s the word? Just didn’t bring a lot. They were in the right place at the right time. Donnie is just the opposite.”

For a five- or six-year period, Mattingly was one of the best players in baseball. But his Yankees teams always came up short. There were no wild-card berths until his final season, and while the Yankees had some bad teams during his playing career, they also had a few that could have made it to the playoffs if there had been extra spots like there are now.

And that’s just the team stuff. There’s also the reality of what the back injury did to Mattingly’s career.

“If this guy hadn’t had the back issues he had, he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer,” Showalter said. “But Donnie, I never heard him once complain about it or [say] woe is me.

“Donnie had a style: It was always sincere. It was real. It wasn’t ‘look at me,’ but through that he had people that looked at him and watched him because you knew anything he did was such a pure-hearted thing. He’s special.”

Mattingly didn’t jump right into coaching after his playing days ended. He took some time away from the game, but from 2004 to today he has been a manager or coach every season.

“When I played here, he was kind of transitioning back into coaching and stuff, and I got to be around Donnie then,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Obviously, managing against him, him being in the other dugout. He was one of my favorite players in the '80s when I was growing up and a guy that I loved watching.

“Just a guy that's turned into kind of a baseball lifer that was obviously a great player and now has been an outstanding manager and coach. And certainly across even different generations, he's one of those guys that has the utmost respect from so many people. Just who he is, the way he treats people. You'd be hard pressed to find a bad word about Donnie.”

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.