Mariano Rivera Highlights: Mo best 'regular season' closer too-Lupica

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Mo best 'regular season' closer too-Lupica

"At the beginning of another October for the Yankees here is Derek Jeter talking about the great Mariano Rivera. In another time in New York, it would have been Willis Reed talking about Clyde Frazier:

"People like to say Mo's always the same, that he never changes. And they're right. But here's something else that doesn't ever seem to change, especially the longer he goes.

He struggles in one or two games early in the season, and people start saying he's done. Then he pitches the way he pitched this season and he's back to being as great as ever.

"You want to know how great he really is?

The only time you see people really wanting to talk to him after a game

is when he occasionally blows one."

October again for the Yankees. That means it is Rivera's time. And maybe because the Yankees will have to go all the way to November if they are going to win what would be the fifth World Series Jeter and Rivera have won together - and because this is the November when Mo Rivera will turn 40 - people are talking to him and about him for more than the occasional blown save now.

In so many ways, all of them good, it is as if we are seeing Rivera for the first time all over again....

He has done what he has done, at such an amazingly high level for such an amazingly long time (at least for a power closer), with such a cold-blooded and ruthless efficiency, that any kind of failure, even in a meaningless regular-season game - a walk-off home run from Ichiro a few weeks ago - is still a shock to the system of the Yankees, and their fans. It will be that way with any playoff failure from Rivera, if there even is one this time, if anybody manages to lay a glove on him.

But it is as if this season, especially the latter stages of it, has demanded that we take a step back and taken a closer look at him,

made us realize once again that genius like this in sports is never routine,

that there has never been a pitcher like this in the history of the New York Yankees

the way there has never been another Yankee hitter like Babe Ruth.

No one would ever suggest that you could take Rivera for granted. It is hardly as if he has been unappreciated, that his talent and grace have somehow been overlooked since he first became a big pitcher for the Yankees in 1996

(it is worth remembering that before he became the greatest closer in baseball history, he was the greatest set-up man).

Still: It has taken another transcendent regular season from him to make us appreciate what a transcendent talent he has been for such a long time, on either side of 161st Street.

He is the most dominant ninth inning in regular season history,

the most dominant ninth inning in postseason history,

the best Yankee pitcher of them all.

He has even closed a bunch of All-Star Games.

And is still here. If this goes the way it is supposed to for the 2009 Yankees, the ball is in his hands for the next Yankee World Series the first week of November, as the Yankees finally win No. 27, do it across the street this time....

There were other home run hitters after Ruth. There have been a number of 300-game winners among starting pitchers. But even though Trevor Hoffman still has more career saves than Rivera, no one who has watched Rivera on this kind of stage, for this long, would say that Hoffman is a better closer than Mo Rivera.

Put it another way:

If it were one game for everything,
which one would you choose?

"Think about what it will be like when he's gone," former Yankee manager Buck Showalter said on Friday.

Showalter was the Yankee manager before anybody knew Rivera's name, when he was a skinny kid coming back from major arm surgery, throwing on back fields in spring training with Whitey Ford and Ron Guidry. This was back when everybody around the Yankees was hoping the kid would be worth the wait.

"You look around baseball," Showalter said, "and everybody has closer issues eventually. Everybody except the Yankees. Closers come and go. Except Mo never goes anywhere."

Then Showalter said, "And you want to know the best thing about him? What kind of person he is. He has changed less over time than any great athlete I've ever known."

On the field, Mo really is the same, night after night, game after game, season after season: No change of expression, just more broken bats, just the constant grand sight of him elevating his fastball when he wants to or has to, three more outs in the ninth, one more save.

That is the Rivera he wants the world - and the opposition - to know. But in the clubhouse, there is the Rivera the Yankees know, the one who is smart and funny and charming and remembers everything that has happened since he showed up at Yankee Stadium, who loves to bust chops. This is the Rivera who says he doesn't even have to talk to new Yankees, all he has to do is look in their eyes to know whether they are going to make it in New York or not.

This is the Rivera who still says Dave Roberts was out stealing second in the ninth inning of Game 4, Yankees against the Red Sox in 2004, the beginning of the end even if nobody knew it at the time. This is the Rivera who will smile and shrug and show you, an imaginary glove on his hand, how close he was to gloving Bill Mueller's game-tying single after Roberts did steal second.

And he can take you through every pitch and every moment of Game 7 against the Diamondbacks in the World Series of 2001, the bottom of the ninth that was the greatest shock of all with Rivera, Arizona scoring two and finally winning the Series on a bloop single by Luis Gonzalez over Jeter's head.

Maybe that is the true measure of Rivera's genius, what a sure thing he has been for so much of his career, but especially in October: We remember the ones that got away with as much clarity as

that night in Game 7 of 2003 against the Red Sox when Mo pitched the last three innings and
seemed perfectly willing to pitch all night.

Sometimes you think: If he doesn't give up the home run to Sandy Alomar in Game 4 of the ALDS in 1997 … if he gets out of it against the Diamondbacks somehow … if he doesn't walk Kevin Millar to start the bottom of the ninth in Game 4 in '04 … then maybe he has won seven World Series already with the Yankees.

I asked Joe Morgan the other day if he thought Rivera might be the greatest baseball pitcher of all time, not just the greatest relief pitcher. And Morgan said, "Now I love Mo," but pointed out that the most famous starters of all, the Tom Seavers of the world, had to go through batting orders at least two times and often three to get to where they got to in the record books.

Then I asked Morgan this question: Is Rivera better at what he does than any pitcher who ever pitched?

Morgan smiled and said, "Now you're talking."

We come into this October talking about Mo Rivera, more than ever, certainly more than he ever has about himself. But looking for more of the same from him. There have been other home run hitters.