How Don Mattingly Balances Old-School Grit With Today’s Game :: Ep 84 Try That in a Small Town Podcast

A legend sits down and tells the truth. Don Mattingly takes us from a Nashville locker room soundtrack to the white-hot core of Yankees–Red Sox, from Steinbrenner’s pressure-cooker to a tiny adjustment that unlocked one of the wildest streaks in modern hitting. We get the human details you don’t see in a box score: the phone call that changed a relationship with ownership, the way a clubhouse becomes a small town, and the rush of watching your kid fall in love with the game from the warning track.

We dig into hitting with precision and humility. Don explains why his doubles came from using the whole field, how a simple cue from Bobby Murcer turned 1987 on its head, and what it really felt like to stand in against Randy Johnson’s sidearm thunder. He reframes the analytics era as a language shift—ride, run, horizontal movement—while still championing contact, tempo, and action. The pitch clock gets a thumbs up. The challenge-based automated strike zone, he argues, is quicker and more strategic than people realize. And the extra-innings runner? It ends games, but it bends bullpens.

Away from the lines, Mattingly Charities is building home libraries for underserved kids, aiming at the third-grade reading cliff with the urgency of a pennant race. We talk about hosting community events in airplane hangars, flying in artists for one-night sets, and creating nights where generosity feels like celebration. There’s space, too, for laughter—Seinfeld memories, golf handicaps gone dormant, and the odd night where Larry David practically pitches a Curb episode over dinner.

If you love baseball’s past and care about its future, you’ll feel at home here. Hit follow, share this with a friend who misses contact hitting, and leave a quick review to help more people find the show. Your notes shape what we do next.

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The Try That In A Small Town Podcast is produced by Jim McCarthy and www.ItsYourShow.co