In Spring of 2004, I went to Tampa to work on research for my book, 50 Greatest Yankee Games. Luckily for me, this was the spring where Don Mattingly came back to the Yankees full time as hitting coach.

Mattingly was one of the pantheon of Yankee greats in camp, along with Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson and Ron Guidry, among others. But unlike those three guys, Donnie Baseball would be there not only all spring, but all year. He was in great demand for interviews, partly because he spent so much time doing his job. I often arrived at Legends Field before the media relations staff, trying to catch him before the busy day woudl start, only to find him already in the batting cage with an eager pupil. How early was this? Sometimes the sun had barely come up. We're talking 7am, 7:15... and this after a night game, the night before.

When I finally was able to catch him, it was during his quick lunch break one day in March. We stood in a hallway between the coach's dressing room and the player's clubhouse, and I asked questions while Don wolfed down a sandwich he had made for himself in the player's lounge. I knew I wouldn't get to ask him about every great game he had been in, but I figured I'd better start near the beginning and just work forward until the clock ran out.

Cecilia Tan: So let's start back in 1983 when you were wearing #46 and Dave Righetti's no hitter.

Don Mattingly: What do you want to know?

CT: Everything, man, everything! How about this--when you played behind Dave Righetti, what did you usually expect?

DM: Normally when he pitched we expected him to do big things. That was my first year and I had remembered seeing him in an instructional league prior to that. He had been Rookie of the Year already at that point, this was like the next year I think, or very close to it. [Close, Don, Righetti was ROY in 1981. --ed.] More than anything I remember it was the fourth of July. We had been to a concert the night before, Willie Nelson, a big concert at the Meadowlands, and then here it was, a hot day, and he just kept getting better and better.

CT: That year he actually pitched a shut out the game before that, too.

DM: He got a roll there working.

CT: So you were new at that point. How did you see the rivalry with Boston?

DM: Good, right away. It was good. It was one of the things I think as a kid I had seen on TV. Growing up watching in '78, the one game playoff and stuff like that. So I already anticipated the rivalry and it was pretty intense. That was good.

CT: Obviously this was the first time you were involved in a no-hitter.

DM: Mm-hmm. I think so. Maybe in the minor league or something. Definitely the first one in the major leagues.

CT: There was almost a double play in the 9th inning but the throw pulled you off the bag...

DM: [matter-of-factly] He was out.

CT: Oh yeah?

DM: He should have been out. I was on the bag.

CT: Were you thinking this might be the thing that would lead to breaking up the game? The one bad break?

DM: Definitely. It's pretty intense, you know, concentrating and such. I think he was out, but, what can you do. It was a double play ball, but we didn't get the call.

CT: Do you think the umpires were a bit nervous by then, too?

DM: Probably. It was a close game wasn't it?

CT: For a while it was.

DM: I remember it was one of those games where you couldn't really relax because it was like 2-0, 3-0, something like that.

CT: It ended up being 4-0, but it took a while to chip away and there were no huge rallies.

DM: Right. Close game.

CT: So Wade Boggs ends up making the last out. He as young then but known for being a contact hitter...

DM: We were definitely on our toes. Because he's a great hitter. Tough on lefties, and he's just tough. He's a tough out all the time. The last guy you'd wanted up there.

CT; On the broadcast, Frank White I think it was, called him "the toughest out in baseball."

DM: The only thing I guess was that Rags had a good breaking ball that day, which really gave him the advantage.

CT: Boggs ends up striking out, a guy who didn't really fan much at all. What are you thinking as he takes that last swing?

DM: Oh I don't know, happy for Dave. Everybody was just going crazy, you know. I was happy for him.

CT: Let's skip now to a little later that year. How did you end up having to play second base in the continuation of the Pine Tar game?

DM: Billy put me at second because I was already in the game, and Gator in center... I don't know why, it might have been to get somebody else in the lineup--Willie might have been out of the game, something might have happened with him. I know there was a reason that I played second, I just don't remember what it is. I don't know why. There were probably players out of the game at the end of the game who had been pinch hit or something.

CT: Plus there were guys on the DL or traded between the game and the second part.

DM: Yeah. It was crazy.

CT: So I read that you had a 12 game hit streak leading up to the game, and a 12 game hit streak after the game, so if you could have gotten up and gotten a hit in the continuation, you would have had a 25 game streak.

DM: It would have extended my streak. It was '83 wasn't it? [Yes.] It was one of those years where somebody was giving whoever had the longest streak like a thousand dollars or something like that. When I was a young player that was a lot of money! That probaby would have been the longest one.

CT; The longest one for a rookie that year certainly.

DM: It didn't happen.

CT: No, it didn't. Let's talk about something that did happen. The 1984 batting title.

DM: Sure.

CT: It seemed to me that in 1984, a lot of Yankees fans were just waiting for something really good to happen, it had been a while since a World Series, and they were a little jaded of the free agent revolving door... here comes a hometown guy. Did you feel like the fans were behind you?

DM: Yeah, I do. I think not so much that I was ... I think it was just the situation, I was the young player coming out of the minor leagues, they didn't really know that much about me, it's kind of a good story. And I was the underdog. Dave Winfield, a free agent guy, had gotten a huge contract to come over an all that. So I think it was just a natural thing. If it had been reversed and I had been the ten year guy and there was a young guy coming up, I think it would have been just the opposite. They would have been for the young guy. Because you always like to see the young guy nobody knows about come out of the minor leagues, as opposed to the other guy. I think it was natural that people rooted for the younger guy.

CT: Was the rivalry between you just a creation of the press?

DM: Pretty much so. Obviously you're teammates, so you're playing and trying to win games, that's the way I looked at it. Day in, day out, you're trying to win games. For me, I had nothing to lose. The worst that would happen to me is I hit .340 or .335 or something as a first-year player, so I was just happy as could be to be swinging the bat the way I was. Starting to get some confidence in the things I could do, so I had nothing to lose. It was fun, you know, for me.

CT: So it comes down to that final game, that final day, and you went four for five with three hits off a rookie call up named O'Neal...

DM: Mm hmm. I faced him somewhere in the minor leagues. I think he was a new guy too, just coming up. He was a pretty good guy for me to hit. I was seeing him pretty good and everything else. So the first time up, I kind of flared one in there, hit a little dinker, the first one, for a hit. And then I kind of relaxed because I was like, well, I hit one. Then I got a couple of good pitches to hit. I swung early in the counts because I was taking a lot of pitches at that time so maybe they were trying to get ahead of me, so I took advantage of that, got two doubles on the next two pitches. So I'm three for three going into the last couple of at bats.

CT: And then you got one more hit off Hernandez to top it all off.

DM: Yeah, I rolled that one through the hole, I didn't hit it that good. And he was tough. That's the year that he may have been the MVP, the year they [Detroit] won it all. He was just nasty on lefties. He had that slider and he was tough. He had a great year that year. He had given me trouble all year long. So he was one guy I didn't necessarily expect to go up there expecting to get a hit off him, and to get him by rolling one through the hole that just bounced over the guy's glove, that type of thing... it was a lucky one. Just lucky.

CT: So you were also in Andy Hawkins' no-hitter.

DM: That one I remember because it just didn't seem like a no-hitter because we got beaten. It was kind of weird. It didn't have the same feeling as the others. He was good. He was a good pitcher that year. But somebody messed up a fly ball in left and that's how they got the runs.

CT: The bases were loaded on walks and Leyritz let one get away from him somehow.

DM: [remembering] In left. It was kind of windy there in Old Comiskey, and Jim, he didn't play left that much. The main thing I remember was that losing the game didn't seem like that much of... it wasn't as special, you know? If you win its one thing, but if you lose...

CT: Was it frustrating to see all that going on on the field as far from you as possible?

DM: Yeah. When you're in a game like that, you're not thinking about the no-hitter. You're thinking about getting outs and getting a run.

CT: It was still 0-0 up to that point.

DM: Yeah.

CT: So why couldn't you guys hit Greg Hibbard?

DM: I don't know. Just one of those days.

CT: He's not really remembered as a star. Seven innings, four-hit shutout.

DM: Changeups, a lot of changeups. I remember he had a real good change. What year was that?

CT: 1990.

DM: There you go. That was one of those teams.

CT: What do you mean by that?

DM: Well, that was kind of when we started going downhill. They kind of dismantled our team after 1988 and started over. We had a bad year in '89. It was just one of those years when we were going downhill. Really, '90, '91, '92, '93, not good. So it was kind of the start of that bad little time there.

CT: Didn't it start to pick up a little bit in '93?

DM: Well...

CT: That's the year of Jim Abbott's no hitter. Tell me a little about Jim Abbott?

DM: Great guy. That was one of those where you couldn't be happier for a guy. He worked so hard, such a great teammate, somebody I had a lot of respect for and a lot of admiration for. Just worked so hard to pitch well. And our team was coming around, so we were starting to have some better teams, a good bunch of guys. Those guys were just starting to turn the corner. I was just really happy for him.

CT: So he would do this thing where he would throw the pitch, flip the glove onto his hand to be ready to field. Then if he fielded a combacker, how did he get the ball to you?

DM: Same way, take it out. It was amazing. I couldn't even tell you how, it was so amazing. He was really amazing.

At that point, it was time for him to get ready for the team to play an afternoon game, and for me to head upstairs to watch it. I eventually got a few comments from him here and there about the 1995 season, and the series against Seattle, but we never had time again for an extended one on one. The complete details about Dave Righetti's no-hitter, the Pine Tar Game, the 1984 batting title race, Jim Abbott's and Andy Hawkins' no-hitters, and the 1995 postseason, can be found in the book 50 Greatest Yankee Games.