Mattingly: I believe in myself ... I'm ready

As soon as Don Mattingly was introduced Friday as the next manager of the Dodgers, fans in Los Angeles started jeering. They don't like that he just isn't a Dodger, a weakness that might turn out to be his greatest strength. At least it shows that Mattingly wasn't hired out of loyalty and popularity. He was chosen on his merits.

Now he has to prove his merits are good enough.

"It's baseball and I've been around the game a long time," Mattingly said at a news conference Friday, as the Dodgers officially announced that Joe Torre will step down at the end of this season and be replaced by the hitting coach whom he brought from New York. "In my heart, I know I can do this. It's a belief in myself that I can do anything I put my mind to. I feel like I've been working for this for a long time. I'm ready."

The Los Angeles Times was filled with comments from readers Friday indicating they are not all that ready to take his word for it. As Lee Harris of Burbank wrote, "This amounts to rewarding mediocrity, and more of the Los Angeles Yankees. I'm sick of it."

What they see is a misplaced pinstriped player, a hitting coach of a team that didn't hit. They see him as someone who has only minuscule, temporary managerial experience, all of it spectacularly bad.

Filling in for Torre during spring training this season, he got the Dodgers penalized for batting out of order because he handed a different lineup to the umpires than he had posted in the clubhouse.

During the season, he topped that when he inadvertently got Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton taken out of the game. Having taken over after Torre was ejected from a game against the Giants, Mattingly visited the mound, stepped off, then stepped back on - constituting a second trip and automatic removal of the pitcher. A 5-4 lead became a 7-5 loss.

On top of all that, there is speculation that Mattingly was hired because the Dodgers are awash in such chaos - what with the bitter divorce proceedings between owner Frank McCourt and his wife, with custody of the team up in the air - that they couldn't afford to go after a proven big-name manager such as former Dodger Bobby Valentine.

So Mattingly has much to overcome. But maybe it would have been worse if he had been hired by the Yankees in 2007 rather than co-finalist Joe Girardi. Had Mattingly been hired to replace Torre back then, he would have had to withstand suspicions that he was given the job only because he was the greatest and most beloved Yankee never to have played in the World Series.

What the Dodgers front office apparently sees are the nuances that New York knew by heart, starting with a passion that inspired Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett to nickname him, "Donnie Baseball." Plus, Mattingly is a quick study. He converted from the outfield to first base in the minors and, his Double-A coach Joe Pepitone said years later, "It took about 10 minutes."

"I'm willing to learn and keep working and working," Mattingly said Friday. He did work hard to become a Gold Glove infielder, American League batting champion and a Most Valuable Player. Torre said, presciently, at Yankees Old-Timers' Day in 2000, when Mattingly was out of baseball, "I'd like to believe the fans are going to see a lot more of Don Mattingly. I know he has a light in his eye for this kind of thing. I just have a feeling he's going to manage someday."

Mattingly looks amiable and sounds soft-spoken, but he can be as tough as nails. He once verbally demanded George Steinbrenner's respect, and got it. He sat out a game rather than bow to Stump Merrill's edict to get a pregame haircut. He was unafraid, as team captain in 1991, to criticize management's decision to shift Steve Sax to third base and install Pat Kelly at second. "There is freedom of speech," he said at the time. "I can say what I want and not be involved."

Now, though, he is on the receiving end of free speech, and it is his turn to prove he can be totally involved.