TAMPA, Fla. -- Don Mattingly has emerged from the dankness of the batting cage, eager to take the next steps out under the game's bright spotlight.
"Donnie was born to be a hitting coach," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. "That was a layup for him. The growth is going to come now that he's being exposed to things he hadn't been exposed to before."
Mattingly, after three seasons as the hitting coach, is Joe Torre's new bench coach, a job that takes on the contours of the personality in it and can be a steppingstone. Across the organization, Mattingly, 45, is viewed as solid managerial timber, something that naturally excites Mattingly, and makes no one, including Torre, uncomfortable.
"Joe tells me, just prepare every day like you're going to manage the game that day," Mattingly said. "He says, `Just be prepared when the opportunity comes.' I just want to be prepared."
Torre, 66, is in the final year of his contract and there has been no talk yet of an extension. Mattingly, who replaced Lee Mazzilli, now a Mets broadcaster, is embracing the new role with characteristic gusto.
"He's a pain in the neck," Torre said. "He's very efficient. He's always showing me things because he knows I'm going to need that information during the season."
Mattingly, the Yankees' biggest star during much of his playing career, which ended in 1995, stayed home in Indiana to be with his family for five years, then got back into the game slowly as a spring training instructor in 2000.
"You could see it at that time," Torre said. "It wasn't just a vacation for him. He didn't just come down to hang out. He wanted to do some good. I told him to let me know if he was ever thinking about doing something full time, because he definitely had the capabilities."
Mattingly took the plunge and became the Yankees' hitting coach in 2004, and over his three years, he often says, the game has been "opening up" for him. Willie Randolph and Joe Girardi both parlayed one season as Torre's bench coach into their first managing jobs.
"As a player, you're just focused on what you have to do," Mattingly said. "You don't know what's going on behind the scenes, you don't think about all the things you think about on the bench. I'm beginning to form ideas about what kind of players I like. If a guy is on the bench, does he sit there and sulk? Some guys are into the game. They're seeing things and passing it along. Those are the kinds of guys you want."
As the hitting coach, Mattingly spent much of his time in the batting cage working on individual swings and approaches. He studied opposing pitchers and readied his hitters. Now that Kevin Long has replaced him, Mattingly is free to roam, look at the Yankees pitchers, formulate opinions and devour information about tendencies. One of his models is Girardi, who was Yankees bench coach in 2005, then became Marlins manager. Girardi is back with the Yankees as an analyst for the YES Network and figures to get another chance to manage eventually.
"I really learned a lot from Joe Girardi," Mattingly said. "A guy would get on base and he'd say, `This guy steals 80 percent of his bases on the first or second pitch,' so you'd need to throw over there, pitch out, that kind of thing. I'll spend a lot of time on positioning our fielders.
"... An [opposing] outfielder may have a great arm, but he's slow getting rid of the ball or he tries to bait runners - you can challenge a guy like that. Others may not have as good an arm but they're always attacking."
This is just a snippet. Mattingly, in fact, goes on and on about such intricacies of the game. Even with the regular season still more than a month away, he talked as if there were an imaginary opponent on the schedule Saturday night.
"He's a blend of old school and new school," Cashman said. "He's really just a great baseball man. He has keen insights into the game, and he is willing to do all the detail work, and it's hard to find people like that."
Mattingly pores over stats such as OPS - on-base percentage plus slugging percentage - but doesn't see himself as strictly a numbers cruncher. He wants to be a people manager in the Torre mold.
"I just want to use common sense," he said. "Those numbers are important, but you have to take into account different things at different times of the year. You have to get guys days off to rest. If you watch Joe, he sets a tone. He sets a tone when we're struggling, he sets a tone when a player is struggling. You can't be down on a guy when he's struggling and then pat him on the back when he's doing well."
Mattingly was with the Yankees in 1985 when Billy Martin was in his fourth stint as manager and Lou Piniella, the hitting coach, was considered the manager-in-waiting, causing tension in their relationship. Torre and Mattingly seem perfectly suited to make such an arrangement work.
"Those things aren't issues when there's trust involved," Cashman said. "Joe trusts Donnie, with good reason. Joe's never been into holding anybody down."
Said Mattingly: "I'd never do anything to jeopardize my character. I just want Joe to know that I'm here for him, and I want the players to know that I'm here for them. That was one thing I remember as a player: It would bother you if you felt a coach didn't care about you. When they do well, we all do well. We're all in this together."
