On the other hand, Tino was a nice player and a nice guy. No where near as good as Yankee fans thought he was. I feel the same way about Mattingly.
Everything you said, and agree about Mattingly ... however, both were stable low key kinda players who were *productive*, and that is the key to a well oiled machine that wins Championships. Although unfortunately in Mattingly's case his career was during the wild wild out of control hands-on Steinbrenner era of the 80's, which brought every single so-called 'superstar-of-the-month' player to the Yankees, as if trying to create an all-star team instead of a *winning* team.
Tino was fortunate to be on a winning Yankees squad which won their first of four Championships largely bereft of any so-called 'superstars' --- the 1996 Yankees --- one of my favorite Yankees squads of the modern era - (the 1976 team being the other, although they didn't win the WS)
MM