74 JULY 2019 • BASEBALLAMERICA.COM
Column
PERSPECTIVEA TALE OF
TWO CAREERS
Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera saved his best
work for when it counted most—in OctoberM
ariano Rivera will be inducted into
the Hall of Fame this summer.
This isn’t news—Rivera has been
a shoo-in for Cooperstown since
the middle of the last decade—but the manner
of his election was. Rivera is the first player
to receive unanimous acclaim by the Baseball
Writers’ Association of America in the annual
Hall balloting.
That it was Rivera, rather than Willie Mays
or Greg Maddux or Babe Ruth, is an accident of
history, a product of the ever-changing, occa-
sionally inscrutable process of choosing our
immortals over 80 years.
Rivera is certainly worthy of the honor as
the greatest relief pitcher who ever lived, and
someone who spent 20 years in the spotlight
without a hint of controversy.
Rivera had two Hall of Fame careers. The
first ran through late September in most
years, the one in which he accumulated 652
saves, the most ever; the one in which heposted a career ERA of 2.21, lowest for any
pitcher born after 1900; the one that started
with him as a two-inning fireman, and ended
with him as the greatest closer ever.
Rivera never had a bad year, his ERA slip-
ping above 3.00 once as a full-time reliever.
His cut fastball, which he discovered playing
catch in 1997, is one of the greatest single
pitches in baseball history. Rivera’s career
wins above replacement, 56.3, is two good
seasons past that of Hoyt Wilhelm and four
ahead of Goose Gossage. Both are fellow Hall
of Fame relievers.
Had Mariano Rivera never been on a play-
off team, he would be the greatest reliever in
baseball history.
He was, though. Rivera was a critical part
of five Yankees World Series championship
teams. In 141 postseason innings, in the high-
est pressure games of all, he had a 0.70 ERA.
He saved 42 postseason wins; the next three
pitchers on that leaderboard have 49 com-
bined saves.
He wasn’t just a save specialist, either;
Rivera averaged nearly one and a half innings
per appearance in the playoffs, and a bit more
than that in his seven World Series. He had 33
postseason appearances of at least two innings... and he allowed a total of four runs in those
games, 28 of them Yankees wins.
Had Rivera never pitched in the regular
season, he would be the greatest reliever in
baseball history.
When I think of Rivera, though, I don’t think
of his numbers.
Rivera is the through line of my adult fan-
dom, of the transition from a young man
reading Baseball America to an old one writing
for it. Rivera’s emergence as a bullpen weap-
on came during the 1995 American League
Division Series, when he threw 5.1 shutout
innings that weren’t enough to keep the
Mariners from ending the career of my favorite
player ever, Don Mattingly.
The next year, Rivera would allow one run
in 14 innings in October, pushing the Yankees
to their first World Series win of my fandom.
John Wetteland closed out that one, but it was
the entrance of Rivera, that entire October and
so many more to come, that meant a game was
over.
Rivera moved into the closer’s role in 1997
and begin racking up saves. I was in the ball-
park, as a fan, on a Monday afternoon in
2011 when he set the all-time saves record.
You never heard a home crowd cheer an
inning-ending double play the way we cheered
Nick Swisher’s eighth-inning 1-6-3, the one
that preserved the save opportunity for Rivera.
Thirteen pitches later, three easy outs, and
save No. 602 was in the books.
Two years later, almost to the day, I was
back at the new Yankee Stadium for Rivera’s
final appearance. Next to me in the last row of
Section 122 was my mother, who had made me
a Yankees fan decades earlier. She would quit
work early to take me to day games across the
street, setting my bedtime to match the final
out from the Bronx or Baltimore or Kansas
City. She wore a Yankees jersey I’d gotten her
last Christmas, and we shared a pretzel just
like we used to, and she set aside the cancer
and the chemo for one night. We couldn’t
look at each other, tears in our eyes, as Andy
Pettitte and Derek Jeter pulled Rivera from the
game, from baseball, from our lives.
She was gone six weeks later. Two Hall of
Famers left the ballpark for the final time that
night.
They live on every day in my world, though.
My daughter is named for Mariano Rivera, her
mother’s all-time favorite player. She has my
mom’s nose and her mom’s smile and Rivera’s
joy and, sad to say, my cut fastball.
When we named her, though, we knew we
could safely do so, not because Rivera would
rack up saves and rings and WAR, but because
we would never open up a newspaper or click
a link and be horrified. Rivera lived his life on
the back page, not the front page, not Page Six.
That’s who Mariano Rivera is—the Hall of
Famer you could name your kid for. nAs incredibly as Mariano
Rivera performed in the
regular season, he was
even better in October. He
recorded 42 saves with a
0.70 ERA in 141 innings in
the postseason, when the
pressure was most intense. JIM McISAAC/GETTY IMAGESJOE
SHEEHAN
@JOE_SHEEHAN