Mattingly’s election to baseball’s Hall of Fame in this, his last year of eligibility, is probably not forthcoming (this year’s class of inductees will be announced Tuesday), a melancholy fact. But then, his playing days as a Yankee had something of a melancholy cast.

He arrived for a cup of coffee in 1982, a year after the Yankees went to the World Series, and retired in 1995, a year before they returned. And in the last half of his career he was a diminished player, his skills attenuated by the persistent back problems that forced him to quit prematurely at 34, his spirit likely withered by the mortifying shenanigans of the Yankees’ principal owner, George Steinbrenner, and his minions (who once ordered Mattingly fined and benched for not getting a haircut), not to mention the ignominy of a last-place finish in 1990.

The usual argument against Mattingly’s deserved (say I) place in the Hall of Fame is that he wasn’t good enough long enough, and that his abbreviated career didn’t allow for the aggregation of homers and hits and runs batted in that often serves as proof of a player’s immortality.

But if you saw him play, especially through the eyes of a Yankees fan, it could make you forget his dreadful mustache. He had one of those stances that gets fixed in your mind — slightly pigeon-toed and tense, bent a bit forward from the waist, his left elbow held in close to his ribs — and a swing that was a perfect uncoiling, the bat lashing out like a spring sprung. In the field he won nine Gold Glove awards, and was terrific on sharp ground balls and exculpating scatter-armed infielders like Steve Sax and Alvaro Espinosa from God-knows-how-many throwing errors.

You want numbers? That 1987 season with those home run records wasn’t nearly his best. He won the American League’s Most Valuable Player award in 1985, hitting .324 and leading the league in doubles (48), R.B.I. (145) and total bases (370). He hit as high as .352 and had as many as 35 home runs and 238 hits in a season. Over a six-year span, from 1984 to 1989, he hit .327, led the league once in hitting, twice in hits, three times in doubles, once in slugging, twice in total bases (and for good measure, once in sacrifice flies).