The Athletic has live coverage of Dodgers vs. Blue Jays in Game 1 of the World Series.
TORONTO – Don Mattingly is not comfortable as a sympathetic figure. He has had a remarkable baseball life, 36 seasons in uniform as a player, coach and manager. Reaching the World Series, as a bench coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, is new. But the purity of the pursuit is what defines him.
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“Complete is a big word, right?” Mattingly said, when asked on Thursday if his career would have felt complete without getting here. “When you say you got a chance to do this, that’d be complete. But it wouldn’t change the way I felt about myself or how I went about my business or anything else.”
Mattingly, 64, is the former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who will face the Blue Jays in the opener at Rogers Centre on Friday. As a New York Yankee, he was probably the best player in baseball in the mid-1980s. His fame makes him a celebrity. His ethos makes him, in his word, a servant.
So that’s why the World Series workout day – besides the required media availabi
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