The Mattinglys, Phillies' father-son manager-GM duo, are embracing an unexpected season

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The Mattingly name is synonymous with certain things in this sport; as Don visited New York Yankees spring training in the early 2000s as a guest instructor and Preston accompanied him, the kid overheard a nickname he made his own. “I would call him ‘Cap,'” Preston said. “I don’t think he loved that one.” It was sometime around then that Preston basically stopped calling him “Dad.” He was Don because, of course, he was. He’s Don Mattingly. “So I’ve tried to keep that up as much as I can here,” said Preston, the general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. He always says Don with a wry smile. But there was a moment this spring in Phillies camp when either president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski or manager Rob Thomson asked Preston to find Don, then the team’s bench coach. Preston poked his head into the coaches’ room. “Hey Dad —,” he said. “I mean, Don, can you come in here for a minute?” Now, Don is the interim manager of the Phillies. His son is the GM in title only. Dombrowski is the boss, overseeing all aspects of the big-league club, and Don reports to him. It is an unusual situation for the Mattinglys. Even a little awkward. But Preston and Don have come to appreciate how they arrived at this moment. They are believed to be the first father-son manager-GM combination in MLB history. They would rather talk about something else. Neither could have envisioned these circumstances. Preston, 38, had charted his own path — first in advance scouting and game planning with the San Diego Padres, then as the Phillies’ farm director, with a rapid ascent to GM. And Don was convinced, following a heart-wrenching Game 7 loss as the Toronto Blue Jays’ bench coach to the Los Angeles Dodgers in last year’s World Series, that his life in baseball had finally ended. “So that was it, right?” said Don, who turned 65 in April. “And then Dave calls, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ I felt like at that point, you just crashed.” Dombrowski told him the Phillies needed his help as bench coach. But when the Phillies made a managerial change last month, Mattingly was not Dombrowski’s first choice to replace Thomson. He wanted Alex Cora, whom the Boston Red Sox had just fired. Cora turned down an aggressive overture from Dombrowski. So, when the Phillies came to a resolution on April 27, Dombrowski turned first to Preston. “This is my decision,” he told him. “I know this is a unique situation. I don’t want to put you in a tough spot. So this is my decision, and it’s what we’re going to do.” Don was doing his laundry when Dombrowski called. “You’ve been in this game long enough,” Don said, “and you get feelings.” He was convinced: Dombrowski was calling to tell him Cora was the new manager. “It was a little bit of a surprise,” Don said. The shock hadn’t evaporated by the time Preston called. “Are you ready for this?” he asked his dad. Soon after Don’s first win, Preston followed Dombrowski into the manager’s office just as they did postgame when Thomson managed. Dombrowski runs the roster. He will solicit input from those around him, but in essence, Preston functions like an assistant general manager. He is Dombrowski’s shadow. In the office, they’ll talk about the game that just ended. Maybe work through a roster move. “You’re making baseball decisions based on what they think is best for the club,” Don said. “But there are moments when I can tell Press doesn’t agree with something. Maybe everyone else can’t. But I can tell when Press has got something to say about it.” It stems from decades of baseball talk between father and son. When Don became the Miami Marlins manager in 2016, Preston was just beginning his own front-office career. “I’m a pretty opinionated person,” Preston said. “We disagree on a lot of stuff.” When they were working for different clubs, Don would call Preston or vice versa, and the conversation would always shift to how Preston thought his father’s roster could improve. “Hey, this guy’s on the wire,” Preston would say. “You guys have to get him.” “I got it, Press, I know,” Don would respond. “But I’m not the GM.” Don will acknowledge it now; there were times when Preston floated a player’s name and he’d see it too. He might have gone to Mike Hill, then the Marlins’ GM, with a suggestion or two inspired by Preston. Preston looks like a younger Don, without the mustache. They talk alike. They have the same mannerisms. They do not always view the game the same. “He’s probably a little bit more old school than me,” Preston said. “Obviously, he came up in a different era. And he probably sees the best in players more than I do, which is a good thing for a manager.” In the Phillies’ clubhouse and dugout, there hasn’t been much talk about father and son. The team has won 11 of 15 games since making the managerial change. And everyone knows Dombrowski runs the Phillies. So it isn’t an issue. It might be different if their last name wasn’t Mattingly. “I’m pretty simple,” Don said. “Pretty straightforward. Not a lot of fluff. So, I’m not that complicated.” For years, those roster conversations were what tied the Mattinglys together. Preston estimated that, in the last four years, he had spent maybe 10 days with Don. It’s life in baseball, and it has always been complicated. There is a certain sadness associated with Don’s career. A chronic back injury and family problems forced him to walk away in 1995 at age 34, having played in only five career postseason games — all of which came in that final season. He played between two glory eras of Yankees baseball; they made it to the World Series the year before Mattingly debuted and won it all the year after he retired. He managed the Dodgers and Marlins for 12 seasons but won a postseason series only twice. He’s fallen short of election to the Hall of Fame on numerous tries. Preston’s mother and Don divorced in 2007; he has since remarried and has an 11-year-old son named Louie with his second wife, Lori. Don has endured public anguish, as it relates to his family. But this last act, something that would have “really been uncomfortable 20 years ago,” is not weird, he said, because of how front-office dynamics have changed in baseball. He can work with his son. “I like it,” Don said. “Because I’m comfortable. I think he’s comfortable. I think the club’s comfortable. I like working with him. Because you think about it, we’ve been in different places fighting for a dream, right? And now we’re together fighting for our dream. It’s a lot better. And I get to see the granddaughter.” Nora is 19 months old; she calls him “Papa Don.” She’s walking now. Whenever the Phillies have a day off at home, Don goes over to Preston’s house to babysit. Thinking of it, his eyes light up. “She relates,” Don said. “It’s … it’s pretty cool.” “It’s been special,” Preston said. “I know he really wanted to be a part of this team, but I don’t know what percentage of it was, ‘Hey, I get to see Preston a lot more and be around my granddaughter too.’ You can tell he enjoys it.” The first few days were different for Preston. He always had a certain anxiety, even from afar, when watching teams his father managed. And there’s no escaping the Mattingly name, which would follow Preston no matter what he did in baseball. He received text messages from peers across the league when his dad was promoted; they acknowledged what he felt. It was all a little awkward. Friends encouraged him to think about it in another way. “At the end of the day,” Preston said, “you’re going to look back years from now and say, ‘Hey man, you know how cool it was you got to work with your dad in high-profile jobs?’ And you’re going to remember that for the rest of your life. So I’ve tried to kind of take that perspective of it. ‘Hey, let’s enjoy this while it’s here.'” A few days before Don was installed as interim manager, Preston called his father. The Phillies were in Atlanta; Preston was not with the team. A 10-game losing streak had tested everyone’s resolve. So Preston just wanted to check in. They spoke for a few minutes. “I’ve had different things in my life, and you feel like they are just moments of clarity, almost,” Don said. “Things were going rough. I don’t know. It was going bad. And I’ve always been pretty good in those situations — like, I understand the length of the season. I’m not going to get excited. I know we have a good club. There’s a lot of baseball left. And, so, I don’t know what caused it.” It was something Don had said that stuck with Preston. It caught Preston by surprise. He is not spiritual, and he was not certain what his father even meant. This whole thing has become a happy accident. Maybe it leads to something so unexpected. Maybe not. But his father couldn’t help but think aloud. “Press, maybe this is why I’m supposed to be in Philadelphia,” Don told his son. “I feel like there is a bigger reason why I’m here.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms