Don Mattingly denied Hall of Fame for 19th time as Yankees legends long wait continues

ORLANDO — The long wait just got a little longer for Don Mattingly.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.

The former Yankees first baseman once again fell short of induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, coming up six votes shy on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, the results of which were revealed on Sunday.The eight players on the ballot — Mattingly, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Dale Murphy, Gary Sheffield and Fernando Valenzuela — needed to receive 12 votes from the 16-person committee to earn induction into Cooperstown next July.Kent was the only member voted in.This was Mattingly’s 19th time he was up for consideration into the Hall of Fame.Three years ago, he had fallen short, only receiving eight votes while Fred McGriff was unanimously selected for enshrinement.

In his 15 years on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot, Mattingly topped out at 28.2 percent of the vote, well short of the requisite 75 percent.“If it doesn’t happen, it’s not going to change who I am, what I think about things,” Mattingly said recently on “The Show with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman” podcast.“No bitterness is going to be in there.

But you hope you get that opportunity.”Mattingly’s next chance for entrance into the Hall of Fame will come in 2028, when the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee votes again. If not for a chronic back injury that cut his career short, the 64-year-old Mattingly may have had a smoother and quicker road to Cooperstown.In 14 seasons as a big leaguer — in which he was a six-time All-Star, nine-time Gold Glover and the 1985 American League MVP — the Yankee hit .307 with a .830 OPS, 2,153 hits, 222 home runs and 1,099 RBIs. Much of that production came from 1984-1989, when he was one of the game’s best players, before a degenerative disc in his back began to take its...