Donald Arthur Mattingly is an American former professional baseball first baseman, coach, and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB). Nicknamed “The Hit Man” and “Donnie Baseball”, he spent his entire 14-year career playing with the New York Yankees and later managed the Los Angeles Dodgers for five years and the Miami Marlins for seven seasons.
Mattingly was named to the American League (AL) All-Star team six times. He won nine Gold Glove Awards (an AL record for a first baseman), three Silver Slugger Awards, the 1984 AL batting title, and the 1985 AL Most Valuable Player.
He served as captain of the Yankees from 1991 through 1995, when he retired as a player. The Yankees later retired Mattingly’s uniform number (23), making him the only Yankee to have his number retired without having won a World Series with the team.
The Dodgers and Mattingly mutually parted ways after the 2015 season, and he became manager of the Miami Marlins in 2016. He remained with the Marlins until they mutually parted ways after the 2022 season.
How Many Gold Gloves Awards Did Don Mattingly Win?
He won nine Gold Glove awards, the second most among first basemen. Not that his offence was to be sneered at: a .307 lifetime batting average, 222 home runs, and three straight seasons of more than 200 hits.
Still, in Mattingly’s 15 years on the baseball writers’ ballot, he was never favoured by more than 28.2 per cent of the voters; his percentage on the ballots for the 2014 and 2015 inductions was in the single digits, and he was removed from the baseball writers’ ballot.
His hopes for election were entrusted to the Hall of Fame’s Modern Era Committee. The debate over Mattingly’s merits will continue.
Is Don Mattingly Good?
Mattingly has one of the best career fielding percentages of any player – ever – at any position. His .9959 percentage means that every 1,000 times the ball came his way, he made only four errors.
He won nine Gold Glove awards, the second most among first basemen. Not that his offence was to be sneered at: a .307 lifetime batting average, 222 home runs, and three straight seasons of more than 200 hits.
Mattingly enjoyed almost instant success in the minor leagues, hitting .349 with the Oneonta Yankees of the Class-A (short season) New York-Penn League in 53 games in 1979.
The next year, he moved up to Greensboro (North Carolina) of the Class-A South Atlantic League, where he led the league with a .358 batting average.
After a strong year for Double-A Nashville (Southern League) in 1981 (.315, 98 RBIs), Mattingly was promoted to Triple-A Columbus in 1982. He had another fine season, hitting .315 with 10 home runs and 75 RBIs, and winning accolades for his defensive play.