A career of near-misses could end for former Yankees star if Blue Jays win it all

There are plenty of players on the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays roster who will be looking to capture their first World Series championship this postseason. There is also a manager who has had a long career in MLB and has gotten frustratingly close to that elusive championship, but has come up short so many times.

That coach is Don Mattingly, currently the Blue Jays bench coach, but a former manager and player who has been involved in the game at the major league level since 1982. On a recent episode of Locked On MLB, host Paul Francis Sullivan, pointed out how Mattingly's entire career has been encapsulated by heartbreaking near-misses, never getting to sip that championship champagne.

A career of near-misses could end for former Yankees star if Blue Jays win it all

Mattingly was a star for the Yankees during his playing days. He was someone who put up consistently good numbers over 14 seasons all spent in the Bronx as the Yankees primary first baseman from 1982-1995, but those years were bookended by two Yankees trips to the World Series and the last one ending in a championship.

Mattingly was drafted in the 19th round of the 1979 MLB Amateur Draft and made his debut in '82 - a seven game cameo for the Yankees. The Yankees had just lost to the Dodgers in the '81 World Series, so Mattingly missed out on that chance to play in the Fall Classic - and for the next 13 seasons the Yankees never made the playoffs.

Mattingly was a six-time All -Star who led the league in hits on two separate occasions, as well as leading the league in doubles three times. He drove in a league high 145 RBIs in 1985, won the batting title in '84 with a .343 average and had the best SLG (.573), OPS (.967) and OPS+ (161) in '86.

But the Yankees never finished higher than second in this era where you had to win your division to get to the playoffs. They were in first place when the strike happened in '94 and when they returned in '95, the Yankees were a Wild Card team in their first trip to the MLB postseason in 14 years.

That was Mattingly's only playoff experience and he made the most of it, hitting .417/.440/.708 with one home run, six RBIs and going 10-24 in a five game series that was lost on the final play of the series, when Ken Griffey Jr. scored from first on a double by Edgar Martinez.

Mattingly retired after that season and a year later, the Yankees were World Series Champions. He came out of retirement in 2004 to be the hitting coach for the Yankees, the year they were up 3-0 over the Red Sox in the ALCS before Boston completed the biggest comeback in MLB playoff history and disposed of the Yankees in seven games.

Mattingly remained with the Yankees until 2006 and in 2009, the Yankees were once again World Series champions, while Mattingly was bench coach with the Dodgers. Mattingly's stint with the Dodgers started as bench coach in 2008, and he became the teams manager in 2011, a role he served until 2015. He moved over to the Miami Marlins in 2016 and while he was managing there, the Dodgers won it all in 2020. He stayed with Miami until 2022 before landing with the Blue Jays where he has been since 2023.

All of those teams that Mattingly was a part of as a Manager or coach, found their way into the postseason while he was tenured, but never won a World Series. In fact Mattingly as a player and a coach has never even reached the World Series. Mattingly is a MLB lifer - he's been around the game for so many years, and he's still chasing that elusive championship.

Maybe in 2025 he can join a list lifers who finally got their ring as a coach that includes Dusty Baker, Ron Washington, and Jim Leyland. Guys that were well liked and around the game for so long, that you just felt like they deserved to get one.