PHILADELHIA (AP) — Don Mattingly felt a tinge of awkwardness when he was offered the chance to serve as a coach under Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts at the All-Star Game.
Mattingly passed on a guaranteed spot in the AL dugout when he left his job as Toronto's bench coach to manager John Schneider after the World Series, which the Blue Jays lost in seven games to the Dodgers.
A six-time AL All-Star, Mattingly thought at the time he was finished with baseball.
He's not only still in the game — he's now the interim manager for the Philadelphia Phillies and has them back in the thick of the playoff race.
He'll also coach against Schneider and his Blue Jays staff at Tuesday's All-Star Game played in Philadelphia's home Citizens Bank Park.
“It is weird being on the other side,” Mattingly said Monday. “I was kind of torn a little bit. But then I go home and my 11-year-old asked me, ‘Do we get to go on the field for Home Run Derby?’ It's like, OK, well, I'm done with that. He made that decision.”
Mattingly is taking directions from a pair of his sons in Philadelphia.
Mattingly originally took the job in Philadelphia to serve as former manager Rob Thomson's bench coach at the urging of his young son, Louis.
"He was kind of like, ‘Dad, you can’t stop. You’ve got to keep going,”’ Mattingly said in January.
Mattingly kept going and joined a Phillies organization where another son, Preston, is the general manager.
Mattingly said in November he left his role in Toronto after reaching his first World Series because of a desire to spend more time with his family.
It's one big family reunion in Philly.
Blue Jays All-Star second baseman Ernie Clement said Mattingly was missed in Toronto.
“It's awesome that he teamed up with Preston,” Clement said. “They're just doing a great job.”
Mattingly is 45-24 with the Phillies since he took over when Thomson was fired in late April after they had lost 11 of 12 games and were tied for last in the majors. Led by All-Stars Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Brandon Marsh, Jhoan Duran, Jesús Luzardo and NL starting pitcher Cristopher Sánchez, the Phillies are just two games back of Atlanta in the NL East.
Mattingly has said he would be interested in having the interim tag removed and possibly returning for a second season as manager. He said Monday he wanted to table that discussion until the offseason.
Mattingly is in his 23rd straight season as a major league manager and coach, having managed the Dodgers and the Miami Marlins.
Mattingly played 14 seasons as a first baseman in the major leagues, all for the Yankees, from 1982-95. The 1985 AL MVP, he captained the Yankees in his final five seasons. He never reached the playoffs until 1995, when he hit .417 with a homer and six RBIs in the five-game Division Series loss to Seattle.
The 65-year-old Mattingly said he feels “as grateful as can be” for his career, even if it ends without a World Series ring.
“I've been in this game for a long time," Mattingly said. “I've done a lot of tremendous things for my family. I don't feel unlucky at all.”
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Philadelphia Phillies interim manager Don Mattingly, right, and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts speak during the MLB baseball All-Star Week, Monday, July 13, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Philadelphia Phillies interim manager Don Mattingly speaks with members of the media during the MLB baseball All-Star Week, Monday, July 13, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone number popped up on his call list, Sen. Chuck Schumer said his heart skipped a beat.
It was shortly after the 2012 presidential election and Republicans had lost badly to President Barack Obama.
Graham was calling with an outlandish proposal — “getting the band back together” — on a bipartisan plan for immigration reforms.
The move was classic Graham.
He has been called the “bridge.” The “dealmaker.” The senator at the center of all the action. And, more recently, “the Trump whisperer.”
Graham embodied a sort of institutional secret sauce that kept the Senate moving — and talking and arguing and laughing — with his hyperkinetic insistence on doing something when the place would otherwise seem destined to grind to a halt of atrophy and dysfunction.
After Graham’s sudden death over the weekend, it is unclear who, if anyone, will fill his role.
“Few have been able to frustrate and anger, amuse and engage me in a single conversation the way Lindsey could,” said Sen. Chris Coons, the Democrat from Delaware, who celebrated Graham’s birthday over dinner after the NATO summit in Turkey just days before the South Carolina senator died.
“I will miss having him as a partner in the Senate.”
Many lawmakers like to see themselves as central to the action, but Graham was among the few actually positioned squarely at the heart of virtually every debate. With his relentless ability to adapt to the political times, he gave voice to issues at home and abroad, and insisted on drawing others into the arena.
There was almost no bipartisan gang in Congress that didn't count Graham as a member — from the gang of eight he hatched with Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to pass immigration reform through the Senate in 2013, to his recent effort with colleagues to impose sanctions on Russia over its war against Ukraine.
“We didn't agree on everything in our bipartisan immigration proposal,” Schumer said Monday, “but we agreed it was worth trying, because doing nothing was worse.”
At a time when Congress is increasingly broken, with lawmakers unable to carry out its basic legislative functions, let alone act with civility toward one another, Graham played a unique role in bringing the sides together.
The heartfelt statements and stories shared on Graham's passing, from other prominent senators as well as the back benches of the House, reflected the breadth and depth of his partnerships.
“We talked at all hours of the day or night, and traveled through all kinds of weather, meeting dictators and democracy defenders,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who joined with Graham on the Russian sanctions bill.
Blumenthal said their views often differed, “but he listened to me,” the senator said, "and sought to bridge our differences.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., opened the day's session noting Graham's empty desk in the chamber, covered with a black drape and white flowers.
Graham's friendship, he said, “made this job richer and its burdens lighter.”
Not that Graham was always successful. There have been plenty of times when GOP senators walked out of their private lunch meetings during a particularly stalemated time in Congress, simply shaking their heads at the latest plan from Graham to break the gridlock.
Graham’s political shapeshifting brought his detractors, to be sure, as did his unbridled pursuit of military intervention abroad.
His bipartisan immigration work with Schumer and the Democrats left Graham almost permanently outcast by the nativist and anti-immigration flank of his party.
And most decisively, Graham’s rapprochement with Trump, after having declared their relationship finished following Trump's role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack at the Capitol, damaged the senator's credibility among some would-be partners.
Still, Graham’s proximity to Trump during the president's second term kept him central to the action, the one senators of both parties would lean on to understand the White House's view.
“Many of us consider him the Trump whisperer,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who served as a manager in Trump’s first impeachment. Trump was later acquitted by the Senate.
“If we wanted to know what the president’s thinking was, or how he might be moved on something, you would go to Lindsey to discuss it,” Schiff said.
Graham's “voice is going to be really, really missed in terms of the relationship that Senate Republicans have with the president and his team.” Thune said on CNN, because "he was so good and so effective at talking to the president.”
In the chamber of 100 senators, with big personalities and bigger egos, Graham's self-effacing humor made it more bearable, helping to smooth the edges and bridge the divide.
He had “a wonderful sense of humor that he used to cut through the tension,” Schiff said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., in her own statement, told a story of seeking Graham’s support for her bill to ensure visas for Afghan refugees.
“I remember standing outside of a little phone booth in the Republican cloakroom last year as he spoke with the Vice President, holding up a sign that said ‘Save the Afghans’ and he put the phone on hold and said ‘OK OK I will go on your bill even if it gets me in trouble,’” she said.
“I will miss him.”
FILE - Sen Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks to the media before the CBS News Republican presidential debate at the Peace Center, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016, in Greenville, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt, File)
FILE - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., leaves a meeting in the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
