Don Mattingly was in the middle of working on a project at his horse farm in Indiana yesterday when he learned from agent Ray Schulte that he had not made the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
Mattingly was checked on 28 percent of the ballots, falling far short of the 75 percent required for election.
Predictably, Mattingly’s reaction could be summed up in one word: classy.
“I want to congratulate both Winny and Kirby,” Mattingly said through Schulte. “They were both great for the game of baseball when they played and they will both be great representatives of the Hall of Fame. I enjoyed playing with Winny and enjoyed playing against Kirby just as much.”
It was Puckett who gave Mattingly the nickname that stuck and still is chanted whenever Mattingly graces the Stadium with his presence: Donnie Baseball.
“I called him that because he was like me,” Puckett said yesterday. “He was always the first one to the ballpark and the last one to leave and he was always working on his stroke. I said to myself, ‘This guy’s a lot like me. He loves baseball the way I love it.’
“So I said, ‘Hey, he’s Donnie Baseball.’ I really hope he makes it to the Hall of Fame and is able to experience the same thing I’m feeling today. It’s a great, great feeling.”
Mattingly, who no longer owns a restaurant, works with his saddle-bred horses “almost daily,” according to Schulte. Mattingly’s wife, Kim, enters the horses in three-gate and five-gate competitions and has won several first-place ribbons, according to Schulte.
“He’ll be back [instructing] at spring training this year with the Yankees,” Schulte said. “He loves the game of baseball and wants to get more involved. Every year now he talks a little more about managing.
“But before he gets involved in that aspect, he wants to do it the right way. He doesn’t want to jump in there before he’s ready. Anything he does he does with a lot of thought and preparation that goes into it. There is a thought in the back of his head that he wants to manage.”
Mattingly doesn’t have a plaque in Cooperstown, but he has one in The Bronx. His number 23 was retired by the Yankees.
“Donnie would never say this, but I think he feels there couldn’t be a bigger honor for any player to have his number retired by the Yankees and have a plaque out there in center field,” Schulte said. “Sure, it’s his dream to get to the Hall of Fame, but we didn’t think he would get selected his first year, anyway.”
Mattingly, the 1985 American League MVP, played in six All-Star Games, won nine Gold Gloves and finished in the top 10 in MVP voting four times. He had a .307 lifetime batting average and was thought to be on track to first-ballot election until suffering back troubles throughout the second half of his career.