Key Highlights
- Some two hundred fans came to the Yankees Spring training facility to watch practice before exhibition games begin next week. 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. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"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 FamersMattingly 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. An illustration of New York Yankees Don Mattingly from the the June 6, 1985 edition of the Evansville Press. 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. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe 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. Six 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?