‘Somebody’s got to do it.’ And as usual, Don Mattingly is happy to be the one, this time for the Phillies

If you give it time, there will always be a moment in which the Phillies interim manager goes … well … full-on Don Mattingly. He becomes one of the most down-to-earth, self-deprecating All-Star baseball men most of us have seen in our lifetimes.

Stoic at times, but with twinkles in his eyes and a warm smile when speaking about anyone other than himself, Don Mattingly refuses, as always, to count himself in that class of unapproachable baseball royalty.

When this reporter, who met Mattingly when he walked into the Yankees clubhouse in 1982, called him before a recent game at Citizens Bank Park, he said, “Just getting back on track, getting some laundry done. … Back off the road and getting back at it.”

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We both laughed. “That is so Don Mattingly,” I said. “‘Getting some laundry done.’”

Well, he said, laughing, “somebody’s got to do it!”

Somebody’s got to do it, indeed.

Coming off a 5-1 road trip that catapulted the Phillies past the .500 mark, Mattingly probably could have been the hottest special guest every sports talk show host and podcaster in the land is craving to have on. But if he has to start tooting his own horn, that is just not him.

It’s the players, he has said on repeat. It’s Rob Thomson’s game plan, still in place after the popular manager was dismissed after a 9-19 start.

“From the beginning, I wanted it to be about the players and didn’t need to hear about me,” said Mattingly, who has led the Phillies to a 17-5/16-6 record since taking over for Thomson on April 28 .

Yet Mattingly, 65, knows from experience what will surely follow if he again manages a team back from the precipice and closer to a run at the playoffs.

Look up the 2013 and 2014 Dodgers. Or the 2020 Marlins. Both of those L.A. teams were in deeper holes than the 2026 Phillies, but ended up easily winning division titles. The 2020 Marlins roster was devastated by a COVID-19 outbreak. Yet that team also made the playoffs, then ousted the Chicago Cubs before falling to the stacked Atlanta Braves.

What occurred in 2013, 2014, 2020 and in 22 games since the end of April certainly doesn’t surprise Derek Jeter, the Hall of Fame shortstop who as recent part owner of the Marlins extended Mattingly’s managerial contract at his first opportunity in 2019.

» READ MORE: Preston Mattingly felt helpless as his mother battled alcoholism. Here’s how they discovered her ‘second life’ together.

“I grew up in my younger years as a minor-leaguer going to spring training with the major league team, so I got to spend a lot of time with Donnie,” Jeter said by phone from Florida. “He was a hitting coach by then. And the thing that stood out with Donnie was that he is so calm. He has such an even keel that when you’re going through the grind of 162 games, you need someone that’s gonna be a constant.

“Donnie’s mindset, his demeanor, he just brings a calming influence to the players on the field.”

Jeter especially remembers those attributes contributing to the 2020 Marlins. Scores of COVID-19-ravaged Marlins were quarantined for days at a time as the franchise stood out as MLB’s Patient X.

Mattingly spent the summer getting to know minor-leaguers with the next-man-up attitudes, measuring veterans’ leadership while fighting back against claims that his players became ill because they were out clubbing during a trip through Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.

It was a test, but one all involved passed as Miami made the playoffs and upset Chicago in the first round of the cloistered playoffs.

“Even when you’re going through circumstances that you have no control over, Donnie always stayed the same,” Jeter said. “And I think that rubs off on players. He was the perfect guy at the helm.”

No one can predict if the Phillies will author another chapter in Mattingly’s history of helping teams dig out of seemingly unscalable holes. All the Phils and their fans can hold on to is that he’s done it with teams that were in a lot worse circumstances.

Through his nearly half-century in uniform, the baseball lifer still possesses the same quiet, almost shy demeanor, yet has a baseball know-how that is beyond question.

Mattingly has the same wry sense of humor, often appearing in the most sublime ways, such as the time he entered Yankees spring training camp with beads threaded throughout a mullet only John Kruk could love. Were they remnants of a Caribbean vacation, or perhaps subtle commentary on the Yankees’ strict hair policy? If Mattingly sparred with owner George Steinbrenner over any one thing it was the length of his locks.

Mattingly is still the same everyman from Indiana. He has always eschewed the spotlight, even in New York.

» READ MORE: What to know about Phillies interim manager Don Mattingly, from ‘Donnie Baseball’ to a classic ‘Simpsons’ cameo

When asked how many paid commercials he made in New York, he said none, before remembering that he did do an “old Coke vs. New Coke” commercial with Phil Niekro, the knuckleballer and the Yankees’ resident father figure at that time.

That was about as close as Mattingly wanted to get to celebrity.

“I was just never comfortable around that kind of thing,” he said.

A family man, he yearned for normalcy and the ability to walk down a street without being swarmed. He was the quiet storm, but a storm nonetheless.

Mattingly didn’t start quietly, numbers-wise. He won a batting title in his first full season with the Yankees, edging out teammate Dave Winfield on the final day of the 1984 season, .343 to .340.

The next year he was voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player by the Baseball Writers Association of America, thanks to a season for the ages (.324, 35 home runs, 145 RBIs). The Gold Glove he won as a first baseman in 1985 was the first of nine in a 14-year career.

In 1984, he was something to behold, a left-handed hitter built for the old Yankee Stadium and its short porch in right field. He had punch, he had power, and he could pile up multi-hit games with the best of them. And it just so happened that so could Winfield, the Yankees’ first $1 million per year man.

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What is known now is that while battling for a batting title in an otherwise lost season, Winfield had a handicap: The secret, increasingly harsh war of attrition being waged against him by Steinbrenner. That the war was ugly can be seen in the result of the game’s investigation into Steinbrenner hiring a gambler to dig up dirt on Winfield . When Commissioner Fay Vincent suggested a three-year suspension, Steinbrenner instead opted for a lifetime ban.

That ban, later reduced to two years, came six years after the 1984 batting title chase. It all still seems fresh to Winfield. He did his best to check the fight at the clubhouse door, so much so that Mattingly was not truly aware of what his teammate was enduring.

“I was probably fitting into the lifestyle in New York,” said Mattingly.

“I wasn’t really paying that much attention to the papers. As a young player, first year in the big leagues, all you’re doing is playing. And for me, having fun. I was having a good year, proving to people I can hit and I can play and trying to establish myself. I had nothing to lose.

“It was probably more after the fact that I realized how much Dave went through compared to me.”

“I never talked about all the stuff I was going through,” Winfield, 74, said by phone from Southern California. “You know, lawsuits with the owner of the team. The way they’re messing with my game, my head.

“Everybody only knew a narrow slice of what was going on.”

Why he hid so much, Winfield said, was to keep the spillover off the field of play. He was the player rep for the players association, so he felt an obligation to shield his teammates, be they rookies or veterans, from as much turmoil as possible.

Perhaps no one benefited from that effort more than the kid at first base.

“Dave was awesome during all this,” Mattingly said. “He never treated me badly, never made me uncomfortable.”

“Donnie, he was coming to work just doing his thing,” said Winfield, who is ready to open up about his battles with Steinbrenner in a book he’s written, Touching All The Bases, due out in September. “People should know that there’s never been any ax to grind with Donnie, for sure. I’m happy for him, definitely.”

One would think that missing the start of the Yankees’ dynasty under Joe Torre and Joe Girardi by a year when he retired in 1995 would be Mattingly’s biggest regret. Or maybe it would be the bad back, or the circus follies of the 1980s, or the wars of attrition between players and management in the Bronx and beyond.

“No, my biggest regret was that we just didn’t move to New Jersey and not go back to Indiana,” said Mattingly, the father of three sons — Taylor, Preston and Jordon — from his first marriage. “We would have kept the kids in school here all year. We would have been there all together, all season.”

Perhaps the hardest tug was Indiana and family calling him home.

“The older they got, the more they wanted Little League, things like that,” said Mattingly. “If we were in New Jersey, even though I may not have got to every game, they could have been playing Little League right here. We could have all been a family right there. Not them back in Indiana and me in New Jersey or New York. More and more, ‘home’ was the road for me.”

So, after that 14th season, Mattingly went home to his boys, who now number six in a blended family with wife Lori and her boys Andrew and Issac, plus 11-year-old Louie.

Mattingly returned to coach, then manage, first the Dodgers, then the Marlins. He even reached a World Series at last, as a bench coach with the 2025 Blue Jays. When the team whose GM is none other than Preston Mattingly approached him about serving in a similar role with the Phillies, Don Mattingly could not say no. Home schooling Louie at times during the season and October, along with daily FaceTime sessions convinced Mattingly that it was OK to go back at it. The game is more family friendly, making it easier to be a baseball lifer and a dad.

It’s a different kind of blend, with one son above in the front office, and another playing ball in Indiana. As always, Don Mattingly is as unique as his many challenges and contributions to the game.

As he said, somebody’s got to do it. Thus far, Donnie Baseball is doing just that, for the Phillies and himself.

Claire Smith is the founding executive director of the Claire Smith Center for Sports Media at Temple University. She is in the writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a Red Smith Award honoree.

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