Q: What do Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Don Mattingly have in common?


A: All three were captain of the Yankees.


Q: What do Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Don Mattingly not have in common?


A: Babe Ruth was in 10 World Series, Gehrig was in seven. Don Mattingly has been in none.


Don Mattingly has never even been in a postseason playoff game in his nearly 12 years as a Yankee, a bit of historic injustice that numbs the minds and makes fans check the records to see if a mistake has been made.


A mistake has been made, all right. You see, being on the Yankees is supposed to guarantee an almost annual appearance in the old Fall Classic.


From their first (1921) to their last (1981), the New York Yankees were in 33 World Series. In fact, they were in 27 World Series between 1921 and 1964.


Yogi Berra was in 14 World Series, no less, in his 19-year career. Mickey Mantle was in 12. Joe DiMaggio was in 10, Bill Dickey was in eight.


The Yankees are supposed to come with the World Series attached. Wear the pinstripes, play in October. Every October.


It isn't as if Mattingly is less than a great Yankee. Like his predecessor, Gehrig, of whom they made a movie by the title, he's also "The Pride of the Yankees."


What do you want--home runs? Mattingly holds the major league record for grand slams in a season--six. He shares the major league record for consecutive-game homers--eight games in a row in 1987. In two of those games, he hit two. He led the league in batting one year. He was most valuable player in another.


So why did the Yankees hit a drought when Mattingly took up Gehrig' s position at first base all those years ago?


Mattingly did most of the things the great old Yankees did. Hit for average, hit with power, hit for damaging effect. In 1985, he drove in 145 runs. Not since 1949 when Ted Williams drove in 159 had anyone driven home that many. And no one has done it since.


He batted over .300 six years in a row, he has had more than 200 hits three years in a row. He should be on one of those monuments in center field at Yankee Stadium. But he might go down in history with Ernie Banks and Rod Carew, near-unanimous Hall of Fame players who never got to the Big Show.


Mattingly is as mystified as anybody. He sat in a dugout at Anaheim Stadium the other night and looked back on a career that merited half- a-dozen World Series and certainly a playoff or three and shook his head.


"I still think it will happen," he insists. "There's time. Things will fall into place." Maybe so.


But there may he something at work here that will not respond to a triple off the fence, a 10-homer outburst in eight days or even the fact that Mattingly may be the most stylish first base fielder since Hal Chase (he once made 22 putouts in a nine-inning game) and that he is the third-hardest to strike out in the league.


He has never missed a team bus or a flight, never starred in a bar fight. He has missed a few fast balls, but usually that was because of back spasms (and currently an infection in his right eye that blurs his vision and gives him two or three balls to hit when he's at the plate. He has to figure out which is the real one and which the illusion. )


He takes his captain's role seriously. He has been captain longer than any Yankee since Gehrig, who held the rank from 1935 until his death in 1941.


Ruth, it is interesting to note, was captain for less than a week- -from May 20, 1922, to May 25. It seems the Babe threw dirt on an umpire and climbed into the stands after a fan. He was busted back to private.


Mattingly does not stone umps or climb into stands after fans. In fact, he is concerned at the alienation of the fans. "It seems like we could get together as an industry--players and owners. We have a common destiny and we should he partners, not adversaries," he says.


It sounds as if Captain Mattingly could be Commissioner Mattingly.


He has a higher lifetime average (.309) than Berra or Mantle. He has more than 2,000 hits, 1,000 runs batted in and 200 homers. He'll make the Hall of Fame, all right. But will he make a World Series?


The impression he is bucking a stacked deck grows, and may be seen in the fact the Yankees last year were leading the league with 70 victories when the strike aborted the season and wiped out the postseason.


If Mattingly seems hoodoo-ed, a case could be made. The Yankees of antiquity always had a surrounding line-up of equal threats. Murderer' s Row, Bronx Bombers, Five O'Clock Lightning. Ruth had Gehrig and Dickey and Combs and Lazzeri. DiMaggio had Dickey too, and Keller and Henrich and Selkirk. Mantle had Maris and Berra and McDougald and Mize.


Mattingly does not want to make it sound as if he is surrounded by Death Row. "There were some years there when we had (Don) Baylor and (Dave) Winfield where I got good pitches to hit always. I mean, they weren't going to walk me with those guys coming up," he points out.


But the days when the Yankees were the lords of baseball have long gone. Royalty isn't what it once was. Mattingly may have been a generation too late.


He doesn't think so. His biological clock has not run out. He's only 34 and could have five or six years left--if the eye responds to treatment. Even one-eyed, Mattingly (current average .324) is hardly anybody' s out man. Rival managers take no comfort in his affliction. As Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann grimly noted the other night, "Mattingly? I wouldn't feel confident if he went up there blindfolded."


But it's not Mattingly's loss, it's the World Series'. Picture a World Series without Ruth, Gehrig, DiMag, Mantle or Berra and you get a World Series without Mattingly, who belongs in one as surely as any of them. By Jim Murray

Copyright 1995 by Indianapolis Business Journal