Aside from the Guerreros, another reason why I should pull for the Canada club is because of their bench coach and Yankee legend, Don Mattingly. In his 39th season of professional baseball, Donny Baseball finally gets a chance to be a part of a World Series. As a ballplayer, though he’s yet to be enshrined, Mattingly’s statistics warrant him a spot in Cooperstown. Due to injuries derailing his career, he’s been kept out of the club, though I’m hopeful that someday he’ll get the nod. Mattingly finished his career with over 2,000 hits, 1,000 runs, 200 home runs, 1,000 RBI, and a lifetime average north of .300. At the time, four first basemen in the game’s rich history had also achieved those marks: Jim Bottomley, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and Johnny Mize. All four of them have a plaque in Cooperstown.
Yet, the reason why I’m a fan of Mattingly is because, when I was down in Florida on vacation, I stopped by Roger Dean Stadium to watch a spring training game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins. It was the first time I had ever been to an MLB exhibition game, and prior to the Grapefruit League game, Mattingly, who, at the time, was the manager of the Marlins, signed a baseball for me. Given his gaudy statistics, plus my baseball fandom, I deeply appreciated the souvenir and placed it into a display case the second he finished signing.
With all that being said, it’ll be hard for me to fade the Jays. Yet, I also have some fun connections to the Dodgers. When I was 10 years old, my family and I took a trip out to Phoenix, AZ. While I don’t recall much about the vacation, I do remember attending a baseball game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers. It was Chad Tracy bobblehead night, but that wasn’t the only baseball-related artifact I would be bringing back home. Before the regular-season match, being a baseball-obsessed youngster, I ran down to the Dodgers’ dugout to see if I could get an autograph from one of the players. By great fortune, I was able to get an autograph from Dodgers manager Grady Little, whom I followed during his brief stint as coach of my home-state Boston Red Sox. Little, who is infamously known in the baseball world for keeping Pedro Martinez in the game too long in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, signed a baseball card that featured him coaching for the Sox. For some reason, I had brought the piece of cardboard with me across the country, and it somehow manifested into an ideal outcome.
Aside from the trading card, while I was standing above the Dodgers’ dugout, scrunched between a hoard of other enthusiasts, Toby Hall, a catcher who, that summer, had been traded from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles, threw me a Dodgers batting glove. As it slid across the roof of the dugout, I snagged it and kept it in my possession with pride.
