SEATTLE - The hard stare of Wade Boggs, almost a trance, really, was fixed straight across the room at Don Mattingly's locker.

"That's what hurts you the most - going around the room hugging guys and you don't know if you're ever going to see them again," the veteran New York Yankees third baseman said. "That's the tough part of this game."

Boggs didn't mention Mattingly by name, but Mattingly had to be on his mind because the first baseman some call Donnie Baseball may have played his last inning with the Yankees only minutes before.

And that last inning was the bottom of the 11th in a crushing 6-5 loss to the Seattle Mariners in the fifth and deciding game of this American League Division Series in the Kingdome on Sunday night.

Mattingly had delivered a two-run ground-rule double to left field in the sixth inning to give the Yankees a 4-2 lead, a margin not nearly good enough to contain the rampaging Mariners.

"I don't know. I don't even care about the next step right now," Mattingly said after autographing bats for Ruben Sierra and Andy Pettitte, embracing Paul O'Neill and finding himself a cold light beer. "It doesn't even matter to me where I go."

Mattingly, 34, had begun his career in 1982, the season after the Yankees last played in the American League Championship Series. This was his first taste of postseason play and it had been both sweet and sour.

The series will be remembered as one of the best in the history of the game. But the Yankees lost and Mattingly's dream of playing in a World Series wearing pinstripes is probably over.

"We didn't come into this series happy to be here," said the man with nine Gold Glove awards, six All-Star Game invitations, a batting title in 1984 and an MVP award in 1985.

"We came here thinking we could beat these guys. We came here thinking we could beat Cleveland. And if we got that far, we would take what we could get."

But now it's home to a long winter in Indiana.

Mattingly will remember the Mariners and he will recall the Yankees in this series.

"Two clubs not wanting to give in, not wanting to give up," the first baseman said. "We ran out of at-bats. We needed another at-bat in this game."

The Yankees would have benefited more with one additional hit in the sixth when they left the bases loaded.

"If we'd been able to throw some more nails in there, we might have been able to afford some more mistakes," said Mattingly, still replaying the game in his mind.

"It's a part of history," said Boggs, his eyes still transfixed across the room. "It's a success because we got here and a failure because we didn't go on. It depends on how you look at it."

Mattingly will look at it again and again through sad eyes, even though there will be many memories that will give him cause to smile. STIER, KIT

Copyright 1995, Gannett News Service, a division of Gannett Satelitte Information Network, Inc.