The Frederick News-Post, Md., Joshua R. Smith column

May 6—I got yanked into a rabbit hole by a former Yankee.

Rabbit holes are everywhere. You can find yourself in them online without realizing it, without even knowing how you got there. Or why.

It could be a word, a sentence, a glance at a TV screen while you're at work. Like: There's manager Don Mattingly visiting a Miami Marlins pitcher on the mound.

Mattingly turned 60 years old that day, the broadcaster informs.

Don Mattingly is 60? No way.

Don Mattingly makes me think of being 10. Opening a pack of Topps and hoping, as my teeth crunched the stick of gum, I'd flip to one of his cards.

Those cards aren't worth anything now. But that memory, man, I can get lost in that memory like a rabbit hole. Being 10 was great. Back then, the idea was alive that I could be a pro ballplayer one day.

I'd play center field and hit leadoff.

Don Mattingly played first base and hit third. He was THE man when I was that age, which is when I fell in love with baseball. I fell so blindly, initially, that I loved the Yankees, too. Even had a NY hat before an Orioles hat.

This was before I knew that in my home state, the Yankees are mostly for hating. No one had told me.

We're in 1987 now. My friend Jamie said his parents had an extra ticket to a Yankees-Orioles game. Could I go?

Again: No way.

Don Mattingly was a Yankee. So was Rickey Henderson. And Dave Winfield. Dave Winfield was MY man back then — before I knew the Yankees were for hating.

The game was on Friday, Sept. 25. How do I know the date? A rabbit hole.

It was an easy game to research because of what happened that night — and what Mattingly accomplished that season.

I'd thought about that game many times over the years. It might've been the first one I ever attended. Or second. I can't remember. Maybe I could straighten the timeline if something more memorable had happened in the other O's game I went to around that age, with my family, against the Blue Jays — when spindly Toronto batter Tony Fernandez buzzed a foul ball right over my head in the very first at-bat.

But that foul ball is basically my only memory of that game. I didn't catch that foul ball and jot the date on it. And foul balls into the right-field seats aren't recorded prominently anywhere. Not in any rabbit hole.

But Don Mattingly's 1987 grand slams are.

He hit a record six of them that year. And I was at Memorial Stadium for the fifth, which tied the mark, I learned down the rabbit hole.

Like I said, that game has always been stuck in the far reaches of my mind. Fragments of memories. But that broadcaster's mention of Mattingly's age, paired with a completely unrelated book passage, stimulated me to randomly pursue more particulars.

I'd been reading "The Courting of Marcus Dupree" by the late, great Willie Morris. Within this chunk of pages, which I bought on Amazon apparently straight off the shelf of the Muskegon County (Michigan) library, Morris riffs on the memories of his first live sporting event.

Morris had a prolific eye for detail and an ocean-deep vocabulary. I make it a point each morning to put down my phone, pick up a book and read for at least an hour. Good for avoiding rabbit holes. But, inevitably, I reach for my cell, which has the Merriam-Webster app. This habit interrupted me frequently with Mr. Morris.

Licentious. Didactic. Inchoate. Internecine. Quiescent. Casuistry.

Those are in my "Recents" folder on the app. Sadly, even minutes after reading them, I can't remember those definitions the way I once could retain stats on the back of trading cards, from a time when baseball became my gateway sport to a broader fandom.

Mattingly was crouched at the plate of that gateway.

----Visions came to mind of my distant vantage point in the stadium's cold upper-deck bleachers. I remembered Mattingly's grand slam, for sure. I also could've sworn that Winfield hit an inside-the-park home run, because I have a clear memory of the 6-foot-6 star striding around third at full speed, losing his helmet en route.

Not so, according to the play-by-play of the game on baseballreference.com — which you should avoid if you're a baseball fan with a tendency to fall into the Internet.

That game began ominously for the Orioles and starting pitcher Jose Mesa, who went on to become a standout closer. I know full-well about his transition, without any rabbit-hole help. Because he's the guy who recorded the save in Game 6 of the 1997 ALCS, sending his Cleveland Indians to the World Series over my O's in a 1-0 game where the only run was scored on an 11th-inning home run.

By none other than spindly Tony Fernandez.

I'm reminded, here, of a fitting notion Morris included in that thick 1983 book: "Everything leads to everything else."

Kind of like rabbit holes.

Anyway, Mesa's ominous start: He walked Henderson to lead off the game. Big no-no. Rickey being Rickey, he stole second, moved to third on a ground out, then scored on a Mattingly single.

Henderson only swiped 41 bases that season, ending his seven-year streak of leading the league. Rickey, I learned in the rabbit hole, blamed his underwhelming 1987 numbers on Lou Piniella, claiming the manager mis-managed Henderson through what wound up being a torn hamstring. Yanks owner George Steinbrenner said that Piniella said that Henderson had been "jaking it" — a phrase for loafing coined in the early 1900s that also gobbled 20 minutes of my life during the process of this column because it wasn't on the Webster app.

Regardless, Rickey's hammy must've been fine on this fall evening. In a popular Henderson plot line, one of his MLB record 1,406 steals helped manufacture one of his MLB record 2,295 runs.

Mesa would soon be gone.

And, believe it or not, so would Cal Ripken Jr.

The eventual Iron Man had gotten bent out of shape and ejected in the bottom of the first inning by home plate umpire Tim Welke after making contact with him as the two discussed some strike calls in a three-pitch backwards K for Ripken. It was the first time Ripken had been tossed in his big-league career. But it was recorded as a start, the 918th straight for Cal, who didn't stop starting for another 11 years.

Here's where I'll admit to being an anomaly among Maryland natives: I didn't grow up an unwavering Ripken fan. I could never pinpoint why, until, perhaps, now. The guy was ejected not even an inning into maybe the first game I ever saw him play. And I hold grudges. This Baltimore star who always played got replaced in the lineup by the less-than-legendary Pete Stanicek.

Mesa didn't last much longer. He got yanked after Mattingly's second-inning slam. My man Winfield then greeted reliever Mike Griffin with a homer of his own.

----But what of the Winfield sprint home that lives in my faulty brain? Turns out, he scored on an eighth-inning double by Mike Pagliarulo. I'm guessing Winfield stretched his long legs to beat a throw home. That's the film that must be playing in my head. But an inside-the-park homer would've been cooler. And he could've done it.

What couldn't he have done? Dude got drafted by four different pro sports leagues. And he could've been an Oriole. Baltimore drafted him out of high school in 1969, but Winfield chose to attend the University of Minnesota, where, among many activities, he pitched.

I discovered that 21 inside-the-parkers were hit in 1987, including one by portly Padre John Kruk(!) the day before this Yanks-O's meeting. But none by Winfield. The only one of his Hall of Fame career was in 1981 — 10 years before he became the oldest player to ever hit for the cycle.

Sorry. I'm imposing my rabbit hole on you. I probably should've wrapped it up a while ago, but that would've been "jaking it."

The Yankees won 8-4.

Four days later, Donnie Baseball hit his record sixth grand slam of the season against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. He never hit another in eight more years.

My affinity for the Yankees ended up being similar to Mesa's and Ripken's game-time on Sept. 25, 1987 — brief. Soon enough, my NY hat got crammed into a closet. I joined the local legions as an Orioles fan.

It was the right decision, I think, if not a good one.

My affinity for baseball has waned as I've aged. Maybe because I never played center in the bigs. I hold grudges. I recently stood in the driveway with a neighbor and lamented how much the game has changed. The lack of balls in play. The weird COVID-caused rules. The infield shifts.

But I still love it. I've discovered a fantastic studio show on MLB network called "MLB tonight." A host and analysts — including Cal's brother Bill, whose autograph I got in 1988 at a furniture store — check in on games around the league.

And, lately, as the scenes unfold, I've noticed many players sporting throwback mustaches. They remind me of the faces on those baseball cards when I was 10.

They remind me of 1987 Don Mattingly, who's now a 60-year-old, clean-shaven manager.

I guess everything leads to everything else.

Follow Joshua R. Smith on Twitter: @JoshuaR_Smith