Yankees great Don Mattingly never appeared in a World Series while wearing pinstripes. Now he has a chance to win one with the Blue Jays.

Buck Showalter did just about everything in baseball. One thing he never did was get to a World Series. The same could have been said for his former minor league teammate, Don Mattingly — until

Mattingly will be John Schneider’s bench coach when the Blue Jays open the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday night, in his 10th season as a coach.

Mattingly is 64 now, twice moved on from managerial positions in Los Angeles and Miami and now serving as Blue Jays manager John Schneider's trusted bench coach. And after so many decades in this game, Donnie Baseball is going to the World Series at last.

Jays manager John Schneider, whose boyhood idol was Mattingly (he’s far from alone), calls it a treat to have Mattingly in the dugout as coach and confidant. And Mattingly says the same. He’s loving his experience as Jays coach, which could keep him in uniform another year.

The long wait is finally over. After 5,231 games over 36 seasons as a player, coach and manager, Donnie Baseball is going to his first World Series. “Obviously it feels great to get there, and I feel like we’re gonna play well too,

After 14 years as a major-league player, 12 as a manager and 10 as a coach, Mattingly is finally participating in his first Fall Classic.

The former Yankees captain, currently the Blue Jays bench, had a front row seat to the Bombers' recent collapse.

On the eve of the World Series, most of the talk was about Mattingly’s past. Blue Jays manager John Schneider grew up in New Jersey a huge Mattingly fan, right down to the Converse Hit Man poster (double-breasted white pinstriped gangster suit, silver bat brandished like a machine gun) on his bedroom wall.