EVANSVILLE − Don Mattingly has long been a Baseball Hall of Famer in the minds and hearts of the people of Evansville, the town where he grew up and played high school ball before starring for the New York Yankees.
Now, at long last, will “Donnie Baseball” officially be enshrined in Cooperstown?
On Sunday night, the Baseball Hall of Fame will announce whether Mattingly garnered enough votes from the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee for selection.
Joining Mattingly on this year’s ballot: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jeff Kent, Carlos Delagado, Dale Murphy, Gary Sheffield and Fernando Valenzuela. Players have to be chosen by at least 75 percent of the 16-member committee for selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee focuses on players whose primary contributions to the game came after 1980.
Mattingly’s impact spans from before that year when he was a high school star in Evansville to long after his playing career ended and he moved to both coaching and charity work.
“What Don Mattingly has done for Evansville is incredible,” said Ryan Berger, president of the Evansville Hot Stove League, which raises money for local youth sports and youth-focused organizations.
Mattingly is a fixture at the group’s biggest annual fundraiser, the Night of Memories.
Mattingly’s pro career was great, but shorter than most Hall of Famers
Mattingly spent all 14 years of his Major League Baseball career with the New York Yankees, the biggest team under the brightest spotlight in the sport.
He made his debut in the Bronx in 1982, a quiet seven-game window that saw him collect two hits over the course of 13 plate appearances. His career took off in 1984, when he made the first of six consecutive all-star teams, hitting .343 to lead the American League and finishing fifth in the Most Valuable Player voting.
He won the MVP award the following season, batting .324 with 35 home runs and 145 RBIs. But he was also a superstar on defense, winning the first of his 10 Gold Glove awards − given to the top fielder at each position in each league − at first base.
The arc of Mattingly’s career is what has held him out of the Hall of Fame until now. From 1984 through 1989, he was arguably the best player in the league. He homered in eight straight games in the middle of the 1987 season, tying the record held by Dale Long.
Sox of his home runs that season were grand slams, which set a record at the time, which Mattingly now shares with Travis Hafner, who equaled the feat in 2006.
The other half of that arc? The second half of Mattingly’s career, when a chronic back injury slowed his production.
In a sport that lionizes players who shine in the playoffs and World Series, Mattingly got just one shot at the postseason as a player: it was his last season, at age 34 in 1995. He played in all five games of a dramatic series against Ken Griffey Jr.’s Seattle Mariners.
In true Donnie Baseball fashion, he was a star in the series, hitting .417 in five games, with a home run and six runs batted in. His last professional hit came in the sixth inning of the decisive fifth game, when he smacked a ground-rule double off fellow Evansville native Andy Benes to drive in two runs.
Seattle won that game in the bottom of the 11th inning when Griffey scored on a dramatic double by Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez.
Mattingly sat out the 1996 season, then officially called it quits in 1997. The back injury was an issue, but he also cited a need for more time with his family.
“I was born with a congenital defect,” Mattingly told the New York Times after he retired. “If I hit too much, I got a pounding soreness. It was like a dead ache in my back. I still get it today when I go out and hit too many golf balls. … I tried to make the best of it. I didn’t want to talk about it.”
He was on the traditional Baseball Writers Association of America hall of fame ballot for 15 years, but never got anywhere near the required 75 percent of the vote needed for induction via that avenue.
His shortened career and reduced production in his later playing years are often cited by voters as the main reason for his omission.
Mattingly was a high school sports sensation in Evansville
Mattingly was good at basketball. He was great at football. And baseball was, “without a doubt,” his favorite sport, he told the Evansville Press in 1978, when he was named the MVP of the all-city football team.
He played quarterback in football, and was a first baseman, outfielder and pitcher for Memorial.
In baseball, Mattingly led Memorial to 59 consecutive victories from the beginning of the 1978 season — in which it won the state championship — up to the state title game in 1979, a 10-inning loss. That winning streak remains an Indiana record.
Mattingly was drafted in the 19th round in 1979 by the New York Yankees. Why not earlier? That year, a Major League Baseball scout said this to the Evansville Press:
“He has had a fine career and his team has had a tremendous past two years. He’s received a lot of attention and deservedly so. But when you break him down as a ballplayer and grade his tools, Mattingly isn’t what you’d call a super pro prospect.”
It worked out for Mattingly, to say the least. He eventually took the Yankees’ offer to sign, walked away from a college baseball scholarship to Indiana State University and within a few years was a star in the Bronx.
Later became coach, manager
Mattingly spent three seasons (2004-2006) as hitting coach for the Yankees, then was named bench coach for the team in 2007. He was passed over for the manager’s role in New York when Joe Torre retired after the 2007 season.
He worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2008-2010 in a variety of roles before ascending to team manager in 2011. He also managed the Miami Marlins from 2016-2022 and was bench coach for the Toronto Blue Jays from 2023-2025. Mattingly left that role in November following the team’s appearance in the World Series.
In 2007, he founded Mattingly Charities. Its original purpose was to provide funding for baseball and softball equipment for kids, according to the organization’s website. It now states that the mission for the organization is to “provide support to organizations who administer educational advancement, social development and athletic programs for underserved youth in the Evansville community.”
“Even when you get away from the baseball aspect of Don Mattingly and you see what he’s done here and as an ambassador for baseball, he’s Hall of Fame worthy,” said the Hot Stove League’s Berger. “We bring in guys for the Night of Memories, guys who played against him and with him, and they say the same thing.”
Some information gleaned from Courier & Press archives.