They had some really good teams in the mid-80s, especially hitting-wise. They just usually had mediocre starting pitching, and George kept trading youngsters for veterans to fill in the gaps.
They might have been more memorable had the wild card been around back then. By the time Mattingly got hurt, the team struggled, George lost it completely with Winfield, and the Stump Merrill Era came in. Mattingly was still a valuable player even in the mid-90s, although diminished, and the ‘94 Yankees looked to do some heavy damage in the postseason if there hadn’t been the labor dispute.
So his era was much more memorable than the Horace Clarke CBS era. Although Clarke was a pretty decent player in his own right.