Don Mattingly sat in the Yankee dugout on a Friday afternoon, looking through a hard rain and across Yankee Stadium to the upper deck in left field. He says it was the first part of the place he ever saw, on the first day he was inside. It was September of 1982. Mattingly was 21, and could not have known the kind of run he would have in New York, because no one knew. He just knew he was a Yankee that day. He was inside. At what could be the end for him here, Mattingly vividly remembered the beginning, as bright and clear to him as all the scoreboard lights on the other side of the dark afternoon.

He started the next season in the minors and then came back to Yankee Stadium for good in the summer of 1983. He has not been the greatest of all the Yankees in the years since. Jobs like that were taken before Mattingly was born. He has not been Babe Ruth, or Lou Gehrig, or DiMaggio or Mantle or Yogi. He has never played in the World Series. He has not made it into a single playoff game, at least not yet. And it does not change something both lasting and important, for him and for us: Mattingly has been our great Yankee.

It is why the yelling about Mattingly that has gone on all year should stop now. Today, Mattingly should be cheered for all the years.

Somehow, in a September a long way from his first at Yankee Stadium, Mattingly has come up on the day when he might have to say goodby. All these years after that first look at the Stadium, in his first September, Mattingly has come up on the day when he might have to say goodby. Or the goodby could come in the first round of the playoffs. It is why he should hear the cheers today. He has already read and heard enough meanness this season, from a nasty trivial chorus that has shown of people who have shown even Mattingly what it is like when big guys lose a step around here.

"You know," he said, "my kids are like all kids. It means they're into Ken Griffey Jr. now. Or they're into Frank Thomas. And they don' t understand that I was Ken Griffey Jr. once. I was Frank Thomas."

His voice quieted now.

"It just didn't last."

He referred to the grand baseball time for him in the mid-1980s when he was once voted the best player in the game, when he could put up the biggest and best offensive numbers in the game. He hit as high as .352, had as many as 238 hits in a season, and 145 RBI, had 53 doubles one time, scored as many as 117 runs, even hit himself 35 home runs in 1985. His memories of all this did not come out boastful. Just history. As facts. He was Griffey Jr. once, when he was young, before his back gave out. He was Frank Thomas. Mattingly was not just on his way to Monument Park, out there in the outfield, beyond the upper deck in left. He was on his way to Cooperstown. Now he may be on his way out of New York, out of baseball. Somehow, much too soon, it has come to that.

He was asked what kind of feelings he will bring with him to Yankee Stadium on this day. Knowing there is even an outside shot it could be the last day.

"I've thought about it," he said. "But I'm not dwelling on it, because dwelling on it would mean I don't think we're going to make (the playoffs), and I think we are. But I know it could be the last day. I realize that. Oh yeah."

I said, "If the Yankees don't offer you a contract, will you play somewhere else?"

Mattingly thought about that one and finally said, "I don't know. That's something for the winter. You're asking me, so I'm telling you. I don't know, Kim (his wife) doesn't know, Jimmy (Krivacs, his agent) doesn't know. I know I can play. If people think I'm through, then they don't know baseball. But I still want to play, I can play for somebody next year. There'll be a fit for me, even if there isn' t one here. There's just a lot of questions I need to answer."

Mattingly sat silent for a few moments and then answered a question that had not been asked.

"If this is the end, I'm proud of what I did here," he said. "I'm proud of what I did, and who I am. It's why I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me. I don't mind being the older guy who's lost some of his skills still trying to compete with the younger guys. . .

"And I know that if I choose to next season, I can make a contribution somewhere." He grinned. "It might not be a $4 million contribution, but I never said that anybody passed a law that I had to make that kind of money to be a ballplayer."

He took a deep breath. At the end, he is not the same player he was. Everyone can see. But he is still the same person.

Something Mattingly said to me a couple of weeks ago about Phil Simms can now be turned around: If Don Mattingly can be treated this way, anybody can. If Mattingly's words don't come out exactly right every single time, he gets jumped. Then he is told he brought all this on himself. Another joke.

"I don't understand a lot of what's happened this season," he said. "I don't understand it at all. But even with things that have been said and written, it's impossible for me to ever think about this as a negative situation. I look at the whole, not the last couple of minutes."

Mattingly got up now, stood at the top of the dugout steps, as he did one day in September of 1982, when it was all ahead of him. He turned around slowly and looked at all corners of Yankee Stadium, and did not seem to notice the rain.

"I never got tired of looking at this place," Mattingly said, then turned his back to this baseball place he owned once and walked back up the runway to the clubhouse. Lupica, Mike

Copyright 1995 by Indianapolis Business Journal.