If you go by peak years, Donnie Baseball had a 3-4 year run you can put up against anybody. He had the misfortune of playing between Yankee dynasties, when Steinbrenner was in full-on crazyman mode.

Yeah, he had a couple giant years, but from a career standpoint he just doesn't measure up to a lot of guys who are hardly even remembered.

And I don't think we can discount the idea that perhaps the reason his teams were between Yankee dynasties rather than being a Yankee dynasty is due to the fact that they were built around him rather than Mantle or Jeter. No championships. He isn't even a true Yankee. Go Tino!

I guess the great Don Mattingly was not allowed to warm up before the game, according to President Darkside. Thank goodness Darkside is not the President of baseball, or else there would be countless pulled muscles in games.

The great Don Mattingly is my favorite Glorious Yankee amongst those players I actually saw play. When you look up "that son of a bitch could play" in the dictionary, there is a picture of the great Don Mattingly. Go ahead, hit a screaming line drive down the first base line. The great Don Mattingly will catch it - with his bleeping face if he has to. Oh, are you trying to sneak a monster curve ball past the great Don Mattingly? Consider that monster curveball deposited off the wall for a stand up double.

I literally begin weeping when I think that this great and Glorious Yankee never won a World Series.

Many that is true, but an incomplete statement.

Yeah, he had a couple giant years, but from a career standpoint he just doesn't measure up to a lot of guys who are hardly even remembered.

And I don't think we can discount the idea that perhaps the reason his teams were between Yankee dynasties rather than being a Yankee dynasty is due to the fact that they were built around him rather than Mantle or Jeter. No championships. He isn't even a true Yankee. Go Tino!

I don't even buy this. You're too smart a baseball observer to lead me to believe anything other than you are doing a contrarian bit.

JORR doesn't like Mattingly

He was the best all around player in baseball for a stretch


And don't give me the True Yankee bit. Mattingly had midde aged Tommy John and Ron Guidry leading the rotation, Jester had Petitte Cone Rivera etc

I have nothing against Mattingly. For a few seasons in the mid-80s he may have been the best hitter in the game. I think calling a first baseman "the best all-around player", regardless of how slick he may be defensively, is a bit silly though. There are just a lot of first basemen as good or better than Mattingly. Will Clark, for example.