A couple of years ago, half paying attention to the ESPN Sunday Night Game of the Week, I noticed that the announcer John Miller kept referring to Mariano Rivera, the peerless closer of the New York Yankees, as “the great Rivera.” I don’t think he meant the words to be capitalized, as though we were speaking of some circus performer. I think Miller meant it as a scientific description, a simple use of a common word that in this case conjured profundity. In recording his 602nd save yesterday, Rivera became the all-time leader in saves, and in doing so, established statistically what has been known for at least a decade: he is the best closer in the history of baseball.
I could go on, but I’ll leave it to Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated, who captured the essence of the Rivera experience two years ago, as the Yankees were winning their most recent World Championship:
“There’s no stadium in baseball quite as relaxed and certain as Yankee Stadium in the ninth inning with a lead. Rivera has not been perfect in his remarkable 15-year career … but close enough. He has been so good that New York fans have grown almost unaffected by the tension and fear that is supposed to afflict the body in the ninth inning of a close game. With other closers — even the best closers — there’s a jolt of adrenaline that runs through the stadium. It’s like the beginning of a Springsteen concert. Here we go! This is going to be great! You rock!
“But with Rivera — even if he does enter to the strains of Metallica’s Enter Sandman — the feeling is different. It’s more like the feeling of a superhero arriving on the scene. `Thank God you’re here, Superman!’ In New York, the game is won when Rivera steps on the mound. The rest is performance.”
It’s always a privilege to see greatness, and it’s been a privilege to have been able to watch the great Rivera.