Rivera grabbed some dirt on his way out, wiped the tears with his No. 42 jersey. He’d managed one last perfect line score. There was no better way to leave the place, and it made everyone who was watching feel both very old and very grateful at the same time.
By Filip Bondy
September 27, 2013
If there was a dry eye in the house, it certainly didn’t belong to Mariano Rivera. For the first time ever in a baseball stadium, Rivera was having trouble locating his emotions, and maybe even his pitches. The ninth inning awaited, his final ninth inning in the Bronx, and there was no institutional memory for anything like this.
So Rivera retreated to the trainer’s room, to a place he often visits after games, but rarely during one.
“I was alone, trying to put some warm on my arm,” Rivera said. “Everything started hitting me, all the flashbacks.”
The Braves . . . the Red Sox . . . When Rivera went back on the mound for the ninth, the hormones and the tangled synapses wouldn’t leave him alone. “I was bombarded by emotions,” he said. Closing time wouldn’t be easy.
Somehow, he got two outs, and then here came two invaders: by special permission of crew chief Mike Winters, Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte walked to the mound to pull their pal from the game.
“He broke down and gave me a bear hug. I bear-hugged him back,” Pettitte said. “He was really crying. He was weeping.”
Rivera grabbed some dirt on his way out, wiped the tears with his No. 42 jersey. He’d managed one last perfect line score. There was no better way to leave the place, and it made everyone who was watching feel both very old and very grateful at the same time.
More than 20 years ago, more than two decades before this occasion on Thursday night, things did not look all that promising for Rivera at spring training in Fort Lauderdale. His fastballs were topping out in the 80s back then, his arm hurt a lot and the general manager, Gene Michael, thought this might be the end of the kid’s career.
“He was just another prospect, a baby with us,” Michael was remembering in a corner of the clubhouse. “I put him in the car, drove him from Fort Lauderdale to Vero Beach to see Dr. Frank Jobe, and I was trying to tell him everything would be all right. He looked overwhelmed. I told him, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ He didn’t speak much English, so I put a Spanish station on the radio.”
The arm got better, the fastball climbed into the mid-90s, Rivera developed a slider and then that cutter of his. The Yanks sent him down to the minors two more times before it all came together. But through it all, Michael said, Rivera always had two things going for him: He had remarkable location on his pitches, and he had a personality to die for. Everyone wished him, sincerely, the very best.
The best is what followed, right to the end. “He made my job fun, he made my job easy,” Joe Girardi said, his voice cracking. “More important, he made our lives better. The humility he has. . . . He just says thank you.”
BILL KOSTROUN/AP
Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter walk to the mound to take the ball from Rivera for the final time at Yankee Stadium in his career.
Nothing is quite perfect this season in the Bronx, so Rivera came into his second straight game Thursday with the Yanks losing big, this time on their way to a 4-0 defeat to Tampa Bay. An old Bob Sheppard recording and “Enter Sandman” heralded his arrival from the pen. The Stadium pulsated. He got Delmon Young to fly out, Sam Fuld to ground back to the mound, stranding two Rays runners.
That was the eighth. In the ninth, Jose Lobaton grounded back to Rivera, Yunel Escobar popped to second. The cutter was flying at 89 mph.
Two outs, nobody on. Pettitte and Jeter came to the mound to take him out of there, to hug him. The Rays gave him a standing ovation, like everyone else in the park. Job done.
Rivera always took this job of baseball seriously, played with an economy of emotion, an innate dignity. He kept playing that way, right through five championships and then again through a carefully choreographed farewell season. This last night, though, was special, more organic. Credit goes to Girardi for much of that.
There are no circuses with Rivera, not like there have been this season with Alex Rodriguez and now suddenly, in a different way, with Robinson Cano and his agent’s reported $305 million demand. It has always been important to Rivera that his career avoid getting bogged down in such loud nonsense. A closer is like an umpire in a way. If he’s doing his job, doing it well, nobody is supposed to notice him.
When Girardi suggested that he might put Rivera in center field for an inning this weekend in Houston, the closer suddenly didn’t sound very enthusiastic about an idea that had always been a fantasy for him.
“This is not a joke, it’s serious business,” Rivera said. “I put in a request a long time ago, and now my knees are not the same. If my body permits it, if I can do it, I do it.”
He doesn’t want to look silly out there, ever. This last game at the Stadium was difficult enough. Hard on him and on everybody. Twenty years after the car ride from Michael, Rivera speaks English better, his arm is healthier and his cutter is a refined weapon. He’s still the same man, though.
“Amazing I got those last two outs,” Mariano said of the evening. “I wouldn’t call it magical. I would call it blessed.”
Then he thanked the media. Who does that?
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/bondy-rivera-tears-caps-emotional-night-bronx-article-1.1469187#ixzz2g6EQ1vlc
No comments:
Post a Comment