Mattingly enjoying taut stretch run with Marlins

NEW YORK — Don Mattingly’s first season in Miami is coming down to crunch time, and the Marlins manager is looking forward to it.

During the final month, he’ll find out whether the fruits of all his labor — the heart-to-heart talks and hard-fought games — are going to result in a trip to the postseason.

“I like our club and our makeup,” Mattingly said on Monday night at Citi Field before the Marlins opened a key four-game series against the Mets with a 2-1 loss in 10 innings. “Now we’ll see where we go this last month. It’s going to be a fun month for us.

“We’re going to learn a lot about our team. I think these guys are going to learn a lot about each other and learn a lot about themselves when you have to play in these type of games.”

It was playoff baseball in August on Monday night in a taut affair that came down to a Yoenis Cespedes walk-off homer in the bottom of the 10th. The Marlins, at 67-64, are in lockstep now with the Mets, 2 1/2 games behind the Cardinals for the National League’s second Wild Card spot.

This is what baseball teams and their legion of fans live for.

Donnie Baseball has been there before, both as a player and as a manager. The Dodgers teams he managed the last three seasons made a habit of playing their best baseball in September and won a trio of National League West titles.

His 1995 Yankees were five games under .500 after losing their eighth game in a row that Aug. 26. They won 26 of their last 33 to clinch the first-ever American League Wild Card spot.

This is what Mattingly remembers about that historic run:

“I just remember saying to ourselves every day that we had to win every day. ‘We can’t …

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