It’s really hard to put into words what Mariano Rivera means to any real Yankee fan. When I heard the devastating news last night, I know its cliché but I felt like one of my family members had just been rushed to the hospital with a serious injury. Mariano Rivera has been in m day to day life, seven months a year since I was in first grade. I graduated elementary, middle school, High School, and college with Mo. I learned to ride a bike, shoot a jump shot, read, write, and drive a car drive a car with Mo in my life. I got married, got a full time job, bought a house, and welcomed my daughter into the world with Mo. From the age of six, to the age of twenty four, Mariano Rivera was one of the few constants that any person can have during that segment of their life.
The sport that I will always love to play is basketball, that will never change. There’s something different about baseball though. It’s nostalgic. I can’t think about baseball without thinking of watching games with my parents and my brother, or calling my dad after a big win/loss and talk about what just happened. There are pictures of me as a two year old with my Don Mattingly shirt on. This is relevant, because I’m not a bandwagon Yankee fan, neither is anyone in my household or family. Growing up I waited in anticipation the entire day for the Yankee game to start at seven o clock. My first clear memory of the Yankees is watching Don Mattingly’s final series in the 95 ALDS against Seattle. I remember the agony that my Dad went through watching the tenth inning of that game, knowing that it was the end for Donny Baseball, and not knowing if it would be another fourteen years before the Yankees made it back to the playoffs.
It’s only fans that remember and watched the pain of that game, the REAL Yankee fans that can understand the devastation of watching Mariano Rivera lying in a heap on the warning track in Kansas City. Mo is so many different things to us real Yankee fans. I’m sure I can’t name all the things Mo is, but I’m going to try to convey what Mo is to me
-He’s a living bridge to the old Yankees. The Yankees that laid the foundation for the brilliance that the late 90’s Yankees gave us. Mo played with Don Mattingly, Pat Kelly, Mike Stanley, and played under Buck Showalter. He’s a bridge to when the Yankees were playing in front of crowds of 15000 at Yankee Stadium. He’s a bridge that spans when the Yankees were just another team that had won in the past, to today where there are few more powerful organizations in the entire world. Watching replays of young Mo coming in and blowing Griffey, and Edgar Martinez away as the setup man always brings a smile to my face, and makes me wonder if Mattingly may have won a title if Showalter realized what he had in the pen out there in Mo
-He’s a testament to the fact that real Yankee fans are objective people, and not the buffoons that we are made out to be. I say this because we didn’t turn on our own. Let me explain…In a matter of seven years, Mariano blew three saves in the postseason that would have advanced the Yankees to the next round of the playoffs or won them a title. For those of you who can’t remember, he blew Game 4 of the 97 ALDS with the Yankees leading 2-1 in the series. He blew Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, and he blew Game 4 of the 04 ALCS (I’m not counting game 5 of that series where he came in with a runner on third and nobody out, and gave up a sac fly). Those are probably three of the most devastating losses that you can have as a fan, and Mo was in the middle of all of them. We could have turned on Mo, and made him the scapegoat. We didn’t. Mo’s brilliance on the mound transcends those three crucial failures, that mostly involved broken bat hits, errors and heroics on the base pads by the opposing team. His numbers, both regular season and playoff are so staggering and such outliers, that thirty years from now some kid will stumble across his numbers for the first time and not believe his eyes. Unlike so many other failures that we fans see in New York, we were smart enough to know that any failure that Mo had wasn’t the result of him being terrified of the moment. We knew guys like Tom Gordon, Randy Johnson, even Phil Hughes have gagged in big spots because they were scared. Mo only failed because it was a numbers game. When you have two full regular seasons worth of stats in the post season, there are going to be a couple of failures. We Yankee fans recognized this, and had Rivera’s back. I’m not sure if that would have happened in a different ‘tough’ city like Philly or Boston.
-Considering the era that he played in, he’s one of the top five greatest pitchers ever, and obviously the greatest reliever ever. Playing in the steroid/exploding offense/small ball park era didn’t even put a dent in his effectiveness. He played in the best division in baseball, and again the effect on him was zero. In the era that he played in, most of the starters were complete little boys when it came to durability. In the playoffs specifically, the Yankees rarely if ever had a starter go seven innings. That meant that Mo was pitching one or two innings in just about every game that the Yankees won, over a sixteen year span where they missed the playoffs once. His ERA over that span is 0.70. It’s hard to even fathom that. Considering the fact that he was the most indispensible player on five World Series Champions, and seven Pennant winners, coupled with his raw numbers, I place his importance and impact above just about any pitcher who’s ever played the game
-Mo is the hero of the greatest game that I ever watched. Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS Mo submitted three of the gutsiest, most pressure packed shutout innings that you can possibly have. With all the stakes of the rivalry and drama of that game, there was no bigger pressure cooker than facing that lethal Red Sox lineup in the 9th, 10th, and 11th innings that he masterfully gave us. Name me one other closer who could have gone three innings against that patient, talented lineup without running out of gas. When Boone’s Home Run sailed into the night, I remember two things. One was jumping so giddily that I hit my head on the ceiling. The other thing that I remember is Mo running out to the mound, dropping to the dirt, and bellowing out tears of joy and triumph. Something like that means so much to a Yankee fan, who typically watches his team deal with the game in a business like, utilitarian manner. We saw into Mo’s soul then, and realized that the win meant just as much to him as it did the diehard fans. When I think back to Mo twenty years from now, it’s that image that I will always remember.
-Mo is human. I watched him in 2004 pitch like a shell of himself after his nephew was electrocuted to death swimming in Rivera’s pool. I swear to this day that is why he wasn’t effective in the series.
-Most importantly, Mo gave the Yankee fans someone to be proud of. All Yankee fans hear about is payroll, buying titles, low character management, low character players, titles that weren’t deserved, players that didn’t live up to their massive contracts, and for lack of a better term, just general hatred. Mo ( and Jeter to an extent but not the same) was our answer to all these criticisms. Mo was home grown. Mo rose to the occasion when it mattered. Mo was the undisputed greatest ever at what he did. Mo treated everyone with complete respect, and doesn’t have one single blemish on his legacy. He treated every person that he ever met with the upmost respect, including his infamous stories about regularly taking minor league players out to dinner when they are called up. If there’s one silver lining in yesterday’s news, it was that I really got to see the respect that Mo has. People who hate the Yankees unanimously gave their regards to Rivera, and gave him proper respect. Shoot, even the almost invariably cold hearted commenter’s on Syracuse.com were all unified in their respect and wishes for Mo. It’s the most important testament to him.
Watching Mo interviewed last night was horrible. The mood in the locker room was as if one of the Yankees had died, from teammates and media members alike. If this is the end, everyone knew that this wasn’t supposed to be the way. We deserved to watch a victory lap, and he deserved that victory lap. When Mo began to tear up when he was asked if this was the end, I’m not going to sugar coat it one bit-I did the same. Unless you’re one of us true fans, you can never understand what growing up with Mo meant, and what watching that pain on his face meant to all of us. If that’s the end of the road, thank you Mo. You were one of the precious few who have been there with me these last sixteen years.
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