Baseball Notebook | Is Mattingly ready for challenge of managing?
NEW YORK - Ask anyone who watched Don Mattingly hit and they’d probably say he could be great at anything. And he may get a chance to take a hack at managing the New York Yankees.
The question is, would he be ready?
A leading candidate to succeed Joe Torre, Mattingly has never managed at any level. Imagine him being handed the reins to the most famous and successful franchise in sports, a pressure-cooker of a job that comes with more distractions than Times Square.
Mattingly, 46, spent this past season as Torre’s bench coach following three years as Yankees hitting coach. Tough gig on a team usually stocked with offense. The bigger issue in the Bronx is pitching, and Mattingly has little experience in that department.
Plus, the only acceptable result around here is winning the World Series. No wonder why, in the days following New York’s first-round playoff ouster, Mattingly said replacing Torre might not be the most enticing task.
“It’s like following John Wooden or something,” Mattingly said. “It’s pretty much a no-win situation for someone coming in here to be able to live up to the expectations or live up to what he did.”
Still, he is scheduled to interview for the job early next week with team ownership in Tampa, Fla. Tony Peña, Yankees first-base coach and former Royals manager, also was invited to interview, along with former Marlins manager Joe Girardi.
Note
• Meteorologist Bernie Meier has studied the computer weather models for the World Series games in Denver next weekend and has come up with two possibilities - the weather will either be nice or not so nice.
“Can’t say for sure, not yet at least,” said Meier, who works for the National Weather Service office in Boulder, Colo. “You just never know for sure around here.”
The World Series games in Denver are scheduled for Oct. 27 and 28. There’s also a game on the 29th, if necessary.
On those dates last year, the region was socked by a storm on Oct. 26 that dumped 5.3 inches of snow in the area. However, two days later, the high was 71 degrees and the snow was a distant memory. That personifies Denver weather.
“It’s a roller coaster,” Meier said.