TORONTO — The clip is easy to find online, so you can see what it looked like. Crank the volume, and you might even be able to approximate what the 57,126 fans in attendance that night heard.
Let’s see if I can make you appreciate what it felt like.
Bottom of the sixth. Tied 2-2. October 4, 1995, at Yankee Stadium. That would be the previous Yankee Stadium—not the artificial-noise mall they play in now, but a baseball cathedral with all the age and creaks to match.
The stadium would move, sway, and bounce in good moments.
The Yankees had not had many good moments for more than a decade, ever since Don Mattingly was a great baseball Odysseus, with the playoffs his unreachable Ithaca. But now, he had a team and a time. So much so that he had decided in September to damn his damaged back and swing all out the rest of the way—whatever happened, happened.
What happened was he hit young again that September and October. The Yankees got to the playoffs for the first time in Mattingly’s tenure, the team rallying around their beloved captain.
Now, in Game 2 of the AL Division Series, it was Mattingly against Seattle’s Andy Benes—an Evansville, Indiana, guy as well. Benes left a 1-0 changeup delectably down and in. Mattingly golfed it into the bleachers.
https://nypost.com/2025/10/23/sports/don-mattingly-has-never-stopped-trying-to-get-to-this-baseball-mountaintop/
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