state trooper
Christopher Rossi
Mariano Rivera is expected to announce his retirement on Saturday morning in Tampa, announce that this will be his last season with the Yankees, announce the beginning of what will be one of the best and longest and most emotional goodbyes in all of Yankee history.
“No one will ever have to tell me when it is time to leave,” he told me once in front of his locker.
So now he has decided it is time to leave, No. 42 telling us that at the age of 43, at the end of a career that stands with anything any Yankee has ever produced, on either side of 161st St.
He will leave with pitching accomplishments that stand with the hitting accomplishments of Babe Ruth, leave with the grace of Joe DiMaggio, leave as someone who deserves his own monument at Monument Park as much as anybody who has ever worn the pinstriped uniform. Ruth was the greatest Yankee hitter, Rivera is absolutely the Babe Ruth of Yankee pitchers. Start there.
And here: The great Rivera will leave as the Yankee immortal who never had a bad season in his life, who was better at what he did — the ninth inning, at the old Stadium and the new one — than any Yankee who ever played the game.
Someday there will be a Mariano Rivera Day at the Stadium, and they will officially retire the last No. 42, Jackie Robinson’s number, that anybody will ever wear in baseball. You know that will be a fine celebration of everything he has been as a pitcher, a day to remember everything he has been as one of the lasting gentlemen of sports, here or anywhere else.
But when that does happen, what we will remember best is the end of all the important baseball nights of his career.
Remember when the door in the outfield wall would open and “Enter Sandman” would play over the Stadium loudspeakers, and he would come running to the pitcher’s mound and get the last three outs of another Yankee victory.
The only time he stopped closing games and stopped closing Yankee seasons was last season, one that ended
Mariano Rivera is expected to announce his retirement on Saturday morning in Tampa, announce that this will be his last season with the Yankees, announce the beginning of what will be one of the best and longest and most emotional goodbyes in all of Yankee history.
“No one will ever have to tell me when it is time to leave,” he told me once in front of his locker.
So now he has decided it is time to leave, No. 42 telling us that at the age of 43, at the end of a career that stands with anything any Yankee has ever produced, on either side of 161st St.
He will leave with pitching accomplishments that stand with the hitting accomplishments of Babe Ruth, leave with the grace of Joe DiMaggio, leave as someone who deserves his own monument at Monument Park as much as anybody who has ever worn the pinstriped uniform. Ruth was the greatest Yankee hitter, Rivera is absolutely the Babe Ruth of Yankee pitchers. Start there.
And here: The great Rivera will leave as the Yankee immortal who never had a bad season in his life, who was better at what he did — the ninth inning, at the old Stadium and the new one — than any Yankee who ever played the game.
Someday there will be a Mariano Rivera Day at the Stadium, and they will officially retire the last No. 42, Jackie Robinson’s number, that anybody will ever wear in baseball. You know that will be a fine celebration of everything he has been as a pitcher, a day to remember everything he has been as one of the lasting gentlemen of sports, here or anywhere else.
But when that does happen, what we will remember best is the end of all the important baseball nights of his career.
Remember when the door in the outfield wall would open and “Enter Sandman” would play over the Stadium loudspeakers, and he would come running to the pitcher’s mound and get the last three outs of another Yankee victory.
The only time he stopped closing games and stopped closing Yankee seasons was last season, one that ended