Mariano Rivera Highlights

Last night Mo arrived at 1152.1 innings, the longest stretch for a dominant power late inning reliever and closer in history. What punctuated the occasion was Mo giving up back to back home runs for the first time ever in his now 15th consecutive year in the big leagues. He is coming off shoulder surgery. We'll wait to see if this continues to take a toll on him. I include both regular (1035 IP) and post season (117.1) because that's what he gave you.

• His achievement is especially unique as it's the first to span the era of 3 levels of post season play and is unlikely to ever be achieved again. Baseball is acutely aware of this feat and is violently opposed to its receiving the credit it deserves. On the contrary, baseball has taken pains to eradicate all mention of post season stats even in noting Hall of Fame careers (recently seen with Goose Gossage's induction and media only reporting his regular season stats).

Their view is it's "unfair" to list anything but regular season stats, saying those who had post season stats were just 'luckier' than others. They are deadly serious about this issue. I merely mentioned the topic on another blog and received a hateful email from a BBWAA member telling me I was stupid and stubborn to even bring up the topic. When it suits them they like to tout the 'regular season total save stat' as a qualifying benchmark to either elevate or diminish a player. The stat on its own has less to do with the pitcher than luck, opportunity, manager's acquiescence, degree of difficulty, in short circumstances beyond the control of the reliever. Or to use their own logic, things that aren't the pitcher's 'fault.'

• How "unfair" and "penalizing" is it to cheat someone out of his career? After all, it's not the reliever's 'fault' that he was pitching multiple innings on November 4th one year while others were relaxing. You might wonder what current national league pitcher baseball is desperate to get in the HOF and would benefit most if Mariano Rivera did not exist. What's to stop the baseball monopoly and its media arm from cheating Rivera out of his career? Nothing. There is no competition. The Yankees have no front office and everyone knows it. If you don't think Selig believes awards are his personal property like everything else, look at how he rigged the vote against Marvin Miller.
  

(In 1995, Rivera appeared as a starter in 10 games, so you can eliminate those innings from his reliever resume to be accurate. All of his post season appearances were in late inning relief starting with his 3.1 ip in extra innings for the win in game 2 1995 ALDS).

• P.S. Hal McCoy, a HOF writer gets to admit he also covered post season games. Whether he was lucky or not, it happened and he worked while he was there.
  
• So that blows baseball's campaign against post season stats being "unfair."
  

"Counting spring training and postseason games, McCoy has covered more than 7,000 major-league baseball games, written close to 18,000 baseball stories..."