Donnie Baseball

I've been in a baseball stat mood today. If there is one sport where you can spend hours perusing and breaking down stats, it's baseball. Not too many stats to look up on offensive linemen. In hoops, you got your points, rebounds and assists and that's about that. Hockey? Goals, assists, plus/minus and you're done. Baseball? They invent new stats every day to the already millions of stats.
Anyway, I was looking at Don Mattingly's statistics. It is a damn shame that his back issues took away what would have been a Hall of Fame career. Check out his numbers in his first four full seasons in the bigs from 1985-1987. He was only 26 in 1987. Astounding numbers. Here are few of Mattingly's eye-popping numbers. Averages of .343, .324, .352 and .327. He had 238 hits in 1986, a Yankees single season record. In 1985, his MVP year, he knocked in 145 runs. Each year in that span he had more walks than strikeouts. Plus, he won gold gloves in 85, 86, and 87.
If you saw him play, you know he was a Hall of Fame player until the back problems.
That is why I'll have a tough time rooting against the Dodgers this year. While I've become a Rockies fan in the National League, my heart has always been with the Yankees since birth. It's in my blood. So I root for both the Yankees and the Rockies and if they ever meet up in the World Series I'm pulling for New York without hesitation.
But I'll be pulling for the Dodgers this year, except when they play the Rockies. Who knows, maybe Mattingly, who falls short of Cooperstown as a player, will eventually get in as a manager. I hope he does well piloting the Dodgers.
Of course, I'll probably never get used to seeing Donnie Baseball, one of my all-time favorites, wearing a Dodgers uniform. It always looked strange to see him in the dugout the past couple of years, next to Joe Torre, wearing Dodger blue.
Maybe one day he'll return to the Bronx as the Yankees manager. Never say never in baseball.