It was Don Mattingly’s 62nd birthday on Thursday and he was celebrating it in New York, where he was Donnie Baseball once and captain of the Yankees in his prime, and is still one of the most popular men ever to wear pinstripes. But he has a new team now, the Blue Jays, and they're in town to play his old team starting Friday in the first big Toronto-New York series of the season.

Mattingly has come to New York before as an opponent, but mostly he's come as an opponent to the Mets when he managed the Dodgers and then the Marlins. This time it is different.

“Going into Citi Field wasn’t like this,” Mattingly said. “The Mets were the other team. This is the Yankees. So it’s always going to be a little different when it’s the Yankees, and Yankee Stadium.”

Mattingly’s long and honorable baseball life has now brought him to a seat next to John Schneider, the Blue Jays’ manager. When Mattingly left the Marlins after last season -- after once being named Manager of the Year there and even getting a postseason series off the Cubs in the short season of 2020 --- he realized he was not ready to walk away from the game. Now he has this seat next to Schneider, whom he likes a lot, and it is a front row seat to all the young talent the Blue Jays put on the field every day, from Vlad Guerrero Jr. to Bo Bichette, all the way through the batting order.

The Blue Jays have been knocking on the door for a few years in the American League East. But to get to where they want to go, they don’t just need to be better than the Rays, who have been better than everybody this April. They are going to have to beat the Yankees. So Mattingly’s new team has to go through his old team. He was managing in the National League before. Now things have changed, dramatically. His front row seat this weekend will be for Blue Jays-Yankees, this time from the visitors’ dugout at Yankee Stadium.

“I’ll be really surprised if we’re not really good throughout the year,” Mattingly said. “I like this club a lot, just because there’s a whole lot to like. It just seems to be to be the right mixture of young guys with experience and older guys who know what a long season looks like.

“I knew how good they were, even watching them from the other league. But I’ve actually been surprised at just how good they really are. I’ll just start with Vlad and Bo. You’re talking about two guys with legit bats, who hit good pitching, who know what they’re doing, who work the right way, and maybe best of all, are committed to doing whatever it takes to win.

“But then this whole group works the right way and gets after it every single day. And that makes it my kind of team. After I left the Marlins, I wasn’t going anywhere without a real shot.”

Mattingly paused and added, “I even found myself a fan base that’s an entire country.”

Mattingly compares Schneider to Brian Snitker, another baseball lifer who worked his way up through the Braves system. Schneider became a Blue Jays coaching instructor 15 years ago, and he finally became their manager last July. In the words of Mattingly, “John feels as if he grew up with these players.”

“I just see myself as being another set of eyes for John,” Mattingly added. “And ears. He knows what he’s doing, and he knows what he wants to do, and I have a world of respect for him. But I’m able to offer another voice sometimes, another perspective, just from my own experience.”

Mattingly was talking about experience that began 40 years ago when he was the hot kid with the New York Yankees. He became a great Yankee, winning a batting title and an MVP Award and being the captain before Derek Jeter -- doing all of that before a bad back ended his career, much too soon. He is the great Yankee who never made the World Series. Maybe he can finally make it with the Blue Jays, with whom he says he is having a blast, watching Vlad and Bo and Matt Chapman and George Springer and the rest of them.

“The thing I really like about being a bench coach is I get to be a part of a lot of things,” Mattingly said. “I feel like I get to do more teaching now, making sure not to get in the way of any of the other coaches, just helping out with the hitters when I’m asked, and with the guys in the field.”

He paused again and said, “I’ve still got a lot of baseball in me, I guess that’s the best way to put it.”

His baseball life takes him back to New York this weekend and a series like this. When he gets off the elevator at the bottom of the new Stadium, he will go into the Blue Jays clubhouse on the third-base side, not keep going toward the Yankee clubhouse at the other end of the long hallway. The great Yankee who’s now a Blue Jay. Yeah. A little different for Don Mattingly at Yankee Stadium.