Mike Shalin's authorized biography of Don Mattingly, the Yankees legend, current Dodgers manager and childhood hero of myself and many others from the NY/NJ area, demonstrates just why the stoic, dedicated no-nonsense All-Star was such a great player - and such a lousy subject for a book.Mattingly, who began playing professional ball at a minor league level straight out of high school, made a career out of the game, playing hard, practicing often and leading his team day after summer day. This single-minded work ethic, combined with a fierce privacy over his personal life, make the events described in his biography little more than impressive statistics and complimentary quotes from teammates, coaches and opponents.
The book doesn't dish dirt, not that I think there's any dirt to dish. It barely mentions his first wife and kids, with the exception of "spending more time with his family" as the real reason he retired in 1997, deflecting attention from the chronically troubled back that cut short his brilliant playing career. Shalin skips over any mention of his divorce of his first wife, briefly discusses advice he gave his sons about playing major league ball, and mentions his second marriage in one sentence towards the end. There is a severe lack of personality in the bio.
Shalin, a sportswriter who followed Mattingly's playing career from rival Boston's newspaper columns, is overtly reverent of the Yankee captain and the praise gets to be too much. The "great player, bad back" story is repeated so often it gets boring, and it's too bad that there's much else to say about someone who meant so much by way of a baseball card for so many of us.
