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Palladino: The Great 'Donnie Baseball' Will Have No Luck On Final Ballot

By Ernie Palladino
» More Ernie Palladino Columns

While our local baseball teams continue to track free agents and send out trade feelers, something else happened this week. The Hall of Fame voters received their ballots, and with them a bittersweet reminder of one former great.

This marks Don Mattingly's 15th and final year on the ballot. That means, in all likelihood, unless the Hall's Veterans Committee decides somewhere way down the line that the former Yankees first baseman deserves a plaque, his name will never again be mentioned in connection with Cooperstown.

That's a shame, but it's right, too. For all Mattingly had going for him, he simply wasn't dominant long enough to merit induction. So once the ballots are all collected by the Dec. 27 voting deadline, "Donnie Baseball" will have to settle for having garnered enough respect and enough votes to hang on the ballot for a full ride.

Again, it's a pity. When Mattingly was right, in the days before back problems cut into his home runs and batting average, he was one of the greatest players of his era and a joy to watch. From 1984 through 1989, he was as dominant a first baseman as there ever was.

Offensively, he was marvelous. His swing, always angled to drive the ball rather than hit the majestic, Jacksonian homer, produced 30-plus homers in three of those years, not to mention the five 100-plus RBI seasons that included a league-high 145 in his 1985 MVP season. That year, he hit 35 homers to go along with a league-high 48 doubles and a .324 BA.

The defense was always there, and there was no one smoother picking up the short-hop throw from across the diamond or turning the 3-6-3 double play than Mattingly. Even as his power and offensive potential faded, he never let go of the leather. He won Nine Gold Gloves, four in his final five years.

Best of all was the one trait that never showed up in the box score. Mattingly was one of the great students of the science of hitting, right there with Wade Boggs and Ted Williams. Sports Illustrated actually brought the three of them together for a roundtable discussion of hitting in 1986, and it proved one of the most fascinating, enlightening articles ever published in that vaunted magazine.

For two and a half hours, the three greats talked hitting in a Florida restaurant after one of the Yankees' spring training games. The conversation revealed that, despite Mattingly's constant attention to everything about his swing -- angle, weight shift, extension of hands -- he never realized half of what he was doing. Much of what he did, he did by feel.

However he did it, Mattingly wound up with fantastic results. The constant tinkering, the nightly mirror work as he honed his swing, turned the left-handed hitter into a menace, especially at Yankee Stadium.

Unfortunately, the Yanks were not a great threat during his time in the Bronx. Not until his final year, 1995, did they even make the playoffs, and they lost that ALDS to Seattle in five games despite Mattingly hitting .417 with a homer and six RBI. He has no championships to his name.

But he had the joy. Mattingly was Derek Jeter before Derek Jeter. Their careers overlapped just 15 games, as Mattingly was going out and Jeter was coming in in '95. But Jeter could well have taken his legendary, smiling approach to the game from Mattingly.

Fourteen years, six dominant ones after a two-year break-in period, and six other respectable ones as his back broke down. He had a great career, just not a Hall of Fame one. A few may vote for him, but he won't approach the 75 percent needed for induction. Not with three first-ballot locks in Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Randy Johnson sitting there. Not with wait-listers like Craig Biggio who fell two votes short last year, or Mike Mussina, or all the rest that include cheaters Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa.

Donnie Baseball will have to settle for being one of baseball's greatest players not enshrined in Cooperstown. He may get in someday. But it won't be the writers who put him there.

No injustice there, but no elation, either. It's just the way it has to be.

Those who saw him play will just have to settle for the excitement he brought to the park every day.

Follow Ernie on Twitter at @ErniePalladino

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