After more than four decades in professional baseball, Don Mattingly is going to the World Series for the first time.

The former Yankees first baseman, who played in the Bronx for 14 years without ever making it to the Fall Classic, punched his ticket on Monday night when the Blue Jays beat the Mariners, 4-3, in Game 7 of the ALCS. With Toronto winning its first pennant in 32 years, Mattingly, the club’s bench coach, now has his first opportunity to win it all after spending 17 seasons as a coach and 12 more as a manager following his playing career.

The closest Mattingly ever came as a player was in 1995, when he and the Yankees made the playoffs in the final year of his career. Mattingly hit .417 against Seattle in the ALDS, adding the biggest home run of his career in the Yankees’ Game 2 victory. However, the Mariners won the next three games and the series, ending Game 5 with an Edgar Martínez double that lives on in infamy in the minds of Yankees fans.

Mattingly never played again after that. A star on some bad Yankees teams, those five ALDS games in 1995 marked his only trip to the postseason as a player.

“Donnie Baseball” came even closer to the World Series as an instructor, as Mattingly was Joe Torre’s hitting coach on the 2004 Yankees. That team came a win away from the World Series but suffered an unprecedented ALCS collapse at the hands of the curse-breaking Red Sox.

Mattingly returned to the Championship Series a few more times with the Dodgers, including in 2013, when he managed the club. Alas, the 64-year-old, who also managed the Marlins, could not get over the hump.

Now that he has, one of Mattingly’s former teams stands in the way of him winning his first championship. That would be the Dodgers, who are looking to repeat after beating the Yankees in the 2024 World Series.

With Los Angeles embarrassing the Bombers a year ago and the Blue Jays tormenting the Yankees all season — they won the AL East and eliminated the pinstripers from postseason play with a four-game ALDS — this World Series won’t be easy to watch for Yankees fans.

However, the possibility of Mattingly finally winning a ring will inspire some Yankees fans to root for a division rival.