Don Mattingly Essay, Research Paper

Don Mattingly was a very hard person to write a book about. The main reason was that it

was so hard to find really good information about Don is because there are no books on

him. The only real good source I had was the Internet, but that ended up being a good

thing, because the Internet ended up being a great source. It wasn t as easy as you might

think it is to decide.

The first thing I did was find all the information that I could find, and I found a

lot. I found information about his childhood. It talked about how he was the best player in

his little league and was always a higher level then his peers. The reason I didn t use this

was because it was boring and wasn t as important to want the purpose of my book. There

were many unimportant facts that I found about his childhood, that would have just been

boring to kids. I only found one fact about him in High School, that is that he played

basketball, baseball, and football. I thought this was perfect because it really showed what

a great athlete he was, and it was very interesting. I don t know any one in my school that

plays all three sports on the schools team.

The next parts of information that I found was about him being drafted and what

he did in the minors, which are outstanding. They including being named South Atlantic

League s Most Valuable Player after leading the league in batting with a .358 average and

hits with 177 in 1980, he was named the New York Yankees Minor League Player of the

Year after batting .316 for the Double-A Nashville Sounds and leading the league with

doubles 35. These were outstanding things that Mattingly did and I would have loved to

say them but they would have been meaningless and boring to kids. Some of the kids

might not even understand what batting average means. It really wasn t relevant to the

point of my story, to show why the fans loved him so and these facts had noting to do

with it. I tried to keep it really simple with what I put in the book before I got to New

York Yankee part of the story. So I stuck to easy things to understand, like how I said

that he was drafted by the New York Yankees in the 19th round. I thought this was

surprising and that the kids would understand.

Now came the easy part and the hard part. The easy part was finding the

information I needs to write the part of the book when he was with the Yankees. I found

tons of stuff on the Internet, I could proubly write I novel about Don Mattinglys baseball

career with all the information I found. I found so much information about Don from 1984

to 1995 that no one would believe it. The states are the major things I found. The stats say

every thing about Don Mattingly but kids don t find stats interesting. Here some of the

stats I found: 1984: .343 batting average(league leading), 207 hits, 44 doubles, and 59

multiple hit games. 1985: 145 RBI(league leading), 48 doubles, 370 total bases(league

leading), .324 batting average, and 35 home runs. This are the types of stats I have for

every year I they say it all. The reason I choose to say he won the batting title and made

the all star team because they will understand that, and is important for him gaining fans. I

also found many facts that were also to boring to put in the book like: in 1984 when he hit

.343 he was the first Yankee left hander to hit over .340 since Mantle did it in 56, he had

surgery twice in 1985 and he won nine gold gloves. These are important facts but are not

interesting and don t really show his popularity fully. I decided to put in MVP because

that is something everyone is familiar with and it has to do with his popularity. I decided

to put the fact that his performance was good on and off the field because that had a lot to

do with popularity. If he didn t have such a great family and he didn t love them so much,

he wouldn t have been so likable. If he was just so guy with no family he might not have

been like so much. And the way he helped the community, as I showed him signing

baseballs for some boys, Don is a really nice person.

Over all I tried to keep every thing simple and very understandable for kids. I also

chose stuff by if I could draw a good picture with it.

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