PHOENIX — A trip home to Indiana would have been nice after six weeks of spring training, a 162-game schedule and the underachieving season the Los Angeles Dodgers had.
Don Mattingly just didn’t have time for it.
The former player known as Donnie Baseball had more baseball to coach, more on-the-job training to get after being named the Dodgers’ next manager.
So, after the season was over, Mattingly headed to the desert to honor his commitment to manage in the prospect-rich Arizona Fall League, the training ground for his turn in the spotlight next year when he takes over for the departed Joe Torre.
“It’s been really good for me,” Mattingly said. “It’s kind of the price you pay to get where you’re going.”
Mattingly is skipper of the Phoenix Desert Dogs and will spend six weeks — until the third week of November — in Arizona, managing every day with a handful of off days as he gets ready for his first shot as a big-league manager.
“I feel like I’m ready to manage,” Mattingly said. “Am I ready for next year? We’ve been working on it ever since the season ended. … Kind of getting ready for next year as I’m doing this.”
Mattingly has been pulling some double duty while he’s here.
With the Dodgers’ spring complex, Camelback Ranch, located in nearby Glendale, he often goes there after Desert Dogs games for evening meetings with general manager Ned Colletti, Dodgers coaches, minor-league staff and members of the scouting department.
“It’s been fun to see these guys and be around it and have to actually do it,” Mattingly said recently. “A lot of these guys I’ve seen, but really you get to see young guys all over the league, so you kind of get a view of what guys have going on, you have a better feel for players as you start to see them in the big leagues.”
The Desert Dogs, like the five other teams in the league, are a collection of younger, highly regarded players from a variety of major-league teams. Mattingly gets to work with Dodgers prospects he knows from spring training; the Desert Dogs have eight players from the Los Angeles organization.
“This is an opportunity for me to show him what I can do,” Dodgers outfield prospect Trayvon Robinson said, “Just in case he gets it in the back of his head like he does need somebody. Needs a baserunner. Needs an outfielder. Needs an outfielder who can come off the bench and switch-hit.”
Arms draped over the padded dugout railing, Mattingly offers a few words of wisdom and encouragement to his players every so often during games. He’s using this fall as a chance to make decisions in games and watch bullpen sessions, and also to make sure he spreads out the playing time and teaches.
At 49, he’s come up with his managerial style from 14 years as a player, seven as a bench coach and hitting coach, and seven as a special instructor with the Yankees in spring training.
“You draw off of everyone,” Mattingly said. “Everyone you’ve played for, played against, guys I played with, they create who you are and what you think about how the game should be played and what you would do.”
Mattingly learned from his former managers, Lou Piniella, Billy Martin, Dallas Green and Buck Showalter, and observed the way teams played under Tom Kelly, Tony LaRussa and Jim Leyland. He decided he wanted to manage later in his playing career.
“You watch all the time, so you’re paying attention to everybody you play against. So you take from everybody,” Mattingly said. “Your club kind of tells you how you have to play.”
The Dodgers are a club that will be trying to regain control of the NL West after winning the division in 2008 and 2009, then being contenders in 2010 until things fell apart right after the All-Star break.
As hitting coach, Mattingly was along for the bumpy ride as the Dodgers parted company with Torre following an 80-82 season.
“A lot of things went wrong, but I don’t think we can forget what we did in ’08 and ’09,” Mattingly said. “We were a club that was a couple of games from getting to the World Series, with a lot of these same guys, so we can’t get too far away from how we got there. These guys got us there.”