Tampa - Opening Day is less than two weeks away and, incredibly, Don Mattingly is home in Indiana, tending to his horses. It is difficult to believe that the former Yankees captain is content to sit while baseball passes him by.

Mattingly yesterday ruled out a return to baseball in 1996, although he left open the possibility of coming back in '97 and said his first choice would be the Yankees. For now, he's a family man. "It seems like I don't know what I do, swear to God," said Mattingly, speaking by phone from his home in Evansville. "I really enjoy the barn a lot. I feel like my top job now is being the bus driver and traveling secretary for [wife] Kim and [son] Taylor, getting them set up . . . I'm really looking forward to this horse season."

Baseball cities like Boston and Chicago have now been forsaken for horse shows in such places as Louisville and Lexington. Why? Mattingly never satisfactorily answered that question yesterday, saying simply that there are a number of factors involved. He expressed a desire to spend more time with his wife and three children, and a weariness from life on the road.

"The ballpark was fine for me," said Mattingly, who will turn 35 April 20. "I was still really enjoying that a lot. I was just having so much trouble away from the ballpark. It was driving me crazy . . . I didn't want to be on the road. All the things that you get tired of, and that you handle because you really want to keep playing, were the things I wasn't willing to tolerate anymore . . . I'd catch myself in a hotel room for four days of a trip, and not really get out of it besides the ballpark."

Mattingly's struggles last season were well documented, and his corner locker in the clubhouse became more like a bunker against the outside world. Only during the Division Series, Mattingly's first playoff appearance in his 13 full major-league seasons, did he rekindle the spark that eluded him for most of the season. The captain hit .417 with four doubles, one home run and six RBI as the Yankees fell to the Mariners.

That five-game stretch lives with him no matter how hard he tries to turn his back on the game. Mattingly said he won't play baseball this season but did not deny that 1997 is a possibility. Despite the myriad injuries that plagued him last year, including his chronic back problem, he did not think his health would be a factor.

"I definitely feel like I can still play," said Mattingly, who is eligible to negotiate with other teams May 1. "I've seen how people pitched me. That told me I was still quick enough to handle the ball and able to play . . . I know I have gas left. I'm only 34 years old. I've always had quick hands, and I know when I left, they were still there. If they would be there for me in a year from now, I don't know."

Mattingly, a free agent, stepped aside from the Yankees last November and then predictably refused arbitration when the club offered it a month later. The amicable parting of the Yankees and their popular captain both prompted and allowed them to trade for Seattle's Tino Martinez and then sign him to a five-year contract worth $25 million. The two chatted when he visited Tampa for a charity golf tournament last month, and Martinez gave him some cigars to take home to Evansville. Mattingly said he has been smoking too many of them recently, which is making the inside of his house as cloudy as his future.

Even if Mattingly were to return to the Yankees, his former club would have no room for him now that it has Martinez. That is fine this season, because Mattingly apparently has no room in his life for baseball.

"I didn't want to do the work and the preparation," Mattingly said. "And I know I didn't want to cheat the game, in the sense that it has given me so much. It's a game I've played since I was a kid. I've always loved playing, I've always enjoyed playing. And to come back and play for money, for a contract, I didn't want to do it."

If he should change his mind, the decision won't come until later this summer. Mattingly wants to simply sit back and let the season unfold without him. That is why he avoided the throng of reporters at the golf course last month, and that is why he probably will not visit Yankee Stadium this year.

Said Mattingly, "I wanted to kind of let this team go."

David Lennon

Copyright 1996, Newsday Inc.