On this date ... 1997

Jan. 21, 1997 Donnie Baseball retires. My favorite non-Pirates player.


Don Mattingly officially announces his retirement, leaving baseball with a .307 batting average and nine Gold Gloves.
I remember his 1987 streak when he homered in eight consecutive games.

 

Wish he was still playing.

Then he wouldn't be Dodgers manager.

 

He retired in 1997? Where was he when the Yankees were winning the World Series in 1996?

 

I gotta be honest I had no idea.
I thought he was out of the game in 1995. So he has a World Series ring? If so, I did not know that.

 

Who gives a shit?

 

He definitely did not play in 1996. Tino Martinez was the Yankees' first baseman that year. Not sure what Mattingly was doing that year.

 

'95 was his last active season, when the yanks were a wild-card team and donnie played in his only postseason -- ten their REAL dynastic run began under torre in '96. if this presser was in '97 it was just a formality. no rings for donnie baseball.

 

He doesn't have a ring. He was done with the Yanks in '95. Orioles thought of signing him in '96 and then he finally officially hung it up in '97, as a Yankee.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/23/sports/mattingly-says-farewell-and-so-does-his-number.html

 

Ok.
I was 99.9 percent sure he had no World Series rings.
Shame.. Crappy Yankee teams and a bad back.

 

Is he wearing a necktie or a tablecloth?

 

I think he was kinda up in the air about retiring after '95, so the Yankees got tired of waiting and went out and got Tino. After a year, Mattingly figured he truly was done.

And then, there's Bernie Williams, who I don't think has still officially retired.

 

Don Mattingly is an interesting case. In his own era, he was wildly overrated. People acted like he was the second coming of Lou Gehrig when he was in his prime. It's tough to defend this MVP when he wasn't even close to the best player on his own team.

Then he retired and eventually became Hall of Fame eligible as new statistics were beginning to gain footing, and the backlash hit him as hard as anyone. Now some baseball writers and fans look at Don Mattingly as nothing more than an example of the Yankee mystique.