I still love you, Donnie

One dude who I don't really give enough respect to on this blog is Don Mattingly.

I love Don Mattingly. I didn't choose to collect Tino because he replaced Mattingly. I chose to collect him because I admired the way he followed Mattingly's footsteps.

Tino wore 23 with the Mariners because he admired Mattingly, after all.

Mattingly cards have never been a huge focus of mine, likely because when I was collecting in middle school, it wasn't easy to go back and buy cards from a few years prior, at least for a kid. Not like it is now to a collect a player from any time. So my Tino collection grew with the current releases in 97, 98, 99, etc.

Naturally, I've accumulated a ton of Mattinglys just from blogger packages and such, but I still never really seek out his cards. The same thing happened recently when someone on TCDB offered me this card, which wasn't even on my wantlist:

That's a 2020 SP legend photo variation. Pretty cool. It's always weird to see older players on current designs, although I guess not that weird since Archives has kind of blurred that line. Plus the legends variations are nothing new. Still, I was glad to get it, even though I didn't have it on my wantlist, per se.

Plus, I traded away 11 cards I didn't want for it, ranging from those Target Vlad Jr inserts to a Cody Bellinger Turkey. Pretty cool trade to ditch 11 2019-20 inserts I didn't want for a Mattingly SP.

More than anything, it's always nice to get a reminder of my first-ever favorite player.