The Closer

by Mariano Rivera

  Maybe it costs me money, too. I extend my contract for two years in 2004, a year before it’s up, and a few years later, the Phillies offer me a contract for four years and $64 million, almost $20 million more than what the Yankees offer. Do you know how long I consider that? For about half the time it takes you to read this page. The reason is very simple:

  I have never played the game for money. I like money as much as the next person, and am fortunate to be able to provide well for my family, but it has never been my motivation for playing. I always felt that if I played the game the right way, if I worked hard and tried to be a good teammate and honor the game, the money aspect of it would take care of itself, and that is exactly what has happened. There hasn’t been one time in my career when I looked at what somebody else was earning and felt shortchanged. Why would I do that? Why concern myself with other people’s business?

  It would do me not one iota of good. It would make me restless and unhappy, tying my contentment to the size of my bank account. The Lord has given me much more richness through His wisdom, as it is written in Hebrews 13:5:

  Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

  Contentedness for me comes from the Lord, and is available to me wherever I am, at any time, whether I am surrounded by fancy walls or no walls. I don’t need anything but the love of the people who matter to me. It’s how I choose to look at life.

  Not that I need it, but as we head into another postseason in 2004 I get a powerful reminder of how little money really matters. It’s minutes after we beat the Twins in the Metrodome to take the American League Division Series in four games; I have just put the Twins away in a ten-pitch bottom of the eleventh.

  We file into the clubhouse to begin with the Champagne-spraying. It never gets old; it feels new to me every time. Mr. T puts a hand on my shoulder and asks me to come into his office. Derek and Mel and a few of the other coaches are there.

  Mo, something happened, Mr. T says. His eyes begin to well up. He is struggling to find words.

  I’m very sorry, Mo. I think Clara should be the one to tell you.

  I have no idea what is going on.

  They bring Clara down to the clubhouse. She is crying, too. I find out later she doesn’t want anyone to tell me anything until after the game. She suffers with grief the whole night, getting comforted by other Yankee wives.

  There has been an accident at our house in Puerto Caimito, Clara says. Victor and Leo were at the pool and they were electrocuted. Neither of them survived.

  I can’t believe what I am hearing. Victor is Clara’s cousin and someone very close to us. I’ve known him my whole life. Leo is his fourteen-year-old son. As I try to take this in, all I can do is embrace my wife and weep with her in Mr. T’s office. Soon I learn all the horrible specifics. Clara and I built the house several years earlier, a place for us to stay when we go back. Victor takes care of the yard and the pool. He and Leo are working there and it’s a very hot day, and Leo decides he’s going to cool off, so he jumps in the pool. There is an electric fence nearby that we use so our dogs don’t get away. One of the cables for the fence accidentally got into the pool, electrifying the water. Leo gets shocked into unconsciousness, and dies from drowning. When Victor sees his boy in the water, he jumps in to rescue him, and the same thing happens to him.

  Clara and I fly back to New York with the team and catch a flight the next day for Panama. I go to the funeral home to see the bodies of Victor and Leo. I want to see them. It may sound gruesome, but I need to see them, to say goodbye to them and express the depth of my sadness, and pray for them. It is a small room in the basement of a building in Panama City. They bring out the bodies, which are being prepared for burial. It is one of the saddest moments of my whole life, to see the lifeless bodies of a cousin who is like a brother, and his young son.

  I begin to pray over the bodies.

  Dear Lord, I know that Victor and Leo are in Your eternal kingdom now, and know that they are in perfect peace. Please bless them and keep them and help their family through the terrible grief they are experiencing. Please give all of us the strength we need in this hour, and help us to find comfort knowing that through Jesus Christ there is eternal life. Amen.

  The funeral is held at Church of God of Prophecy in Puerto Caimito on Tuesday morning, October 12, a two-hour service attended by hundreds of people. Rev. Alexis Reyes talks about how fame and money do not matter in this world. It is our love of Jesus Christ that matters. We go to the cemetery nearby and release balloons into the sky. I leave Panama City at about 2:30 p.m. on a private plane provided by the Yankees, and I land in Teterboro Airport in New Jersey a little after 7:00 p.m. The Yankees arrange for my documentation to be handled quickly so I can get on my way. They have a blue Cadillac waiting for me and we drive through north Jersey, across the George Washington Bridge and down the Major Deegan to the Stadium. It’s the second inning when I arrive. I’ve spent a good part of the day crying and am emotionally exhausted, but it’s good to be back at work and to immerse myself in game preparation, mental and physical. I want to compete. I want to get in this ball game and help my team win.

  That would be the best healing agent of all.

  I head right for the clubhouse. Geno is there, waiting for me. We share a long hug. It feels so good to see Geno’s kind face. We talk as I get rubbed down and go through my routine. In the bottom of the fifth inning I arrive in the bullpen, with the Yankees leading, 6–0. Every guy out there comes up and hugs me. The fans in the bleachers spot me and a “Mariano” chant begins. It is exactly where I need to be. The guys give me a quick update on the game—Matsui has four RBIs, including a three-run double that helped chase Curt Schilling after three innings—and soon the lead goes to 8–0. I sit down and watch the artistry of Mussina, who has a perfect game into the seventh, before the Red Sox suddenly throw up five runs, making this a game that I will almost certainly pitch in. When Tom Gordon gives up a two-run triple to Ortiz with two outs in the eighth, the lead is down to one and the phone rings, and it’s time.

  The hitter is Kevin Millar. I fall behind, 2–1, and then bring a cutter that Millar rips at but pops to short. Bernie’s two-run double in the bottom of the inning gives us a three-run cushion, and with two guys on, I get Bill Mueller to bounce into a 1-6-3 double play, a rousing finish to a wrenching day.

  Nobody needs to remind us that this Red Sox team has a bunch of guys with pit-bull makeup, guys who are gamers, even after they go down two games to none one night later, when we win, 3–1, behind Jon Lieber, who outpitches Pedro. I get another four-out save, striking out Damon, Ortiz, and Millar, and off we go to Boston, but Red Sox hopes that the sight of the Green Monster and the Pesky Pole will change their fortunes get buried beneath an avalanche of Yankee home runs, over the Monster and other walls, too. Matsui hits two of them and goes five for six with five RBIs. Alex Rodriguez has another, drives in three and scores five. Gary Sheffield also homers and has four hits, and Bernie has four hits, too. It is a nightlong BP session and a 19–8 triumph for us, and with Duque matched against Derek Lowe in Game 4, it doesn’t even look as if it will be a fair fight.

  We hold to a 4–3 lead through seven innings of Game 4. The bullpen phone rings.

  Mo, you got the eighth, Rich Monteleone says. As I stand up and start getting loose, a drunken fan begins to holler at me. I ignore him, but he continues. It is impossible not to hear him. He is right in my ear.

  Is he really doing this? I think. Is this where we are now?

  The drunken fan decides it would be fun to taunt me about my cousin and his son. He is going on about it, one sick and twisted insult after another. I can’t even write what he says, it is so ugly. I wouldn’t even want it in my book. I put all my attention on Mike Borzello’s target. I am not going to let a drunken fool take me away from my task at hand. More than angry, I am sad. Sad that a human being could stoop so low, sad that
this man is so full of poison, and so miserable in his own life, that he would bring up the deaths of two people I love, one of them a child.

  It is a new low.

  I enter the game with us leading, 4–3, in the bottom of the eighth. Manny singles, but I strike out Ortiz and get through the heart of the Sox order with no drama. In the ninth, the leadoff batter is Millar. He has had success against me, so I am extra careful, especially after he smokes a foul line drive early in the at-bat. My 3–1 pitch is high and Millar walks, and is immediately replaced by Dave Roberts, who is in the game to steal a base. I know it. Jorge knows it. The whole park knows it. Roberts stole thirty-eight bases in forty-one tries this year, and his lead is big. I throw over to first, fairly easily. Then I throw over again, and then a third time. He just beats the tag of our first baseman, Tony Clark.

  I am thinking we might pitch out, but the call never comes. On my first pitch to the next hitter, Bill Mueller, Roberts is off. He gets a good jump. The pitch is up and away and Jorge makes a strong throw to Derek, who slaps the tag on just an instant late. Roberts is in scoring position with nobody out. Mueller fakes bunt and takes a strike. I throw a cutter over the plate, not where I want it, and he spanks it up the middle. I try to spear it as if I were a hockey goalie, even kick out my leg, but the ball goes into center and Dave Roberts goes home.

  Mueller had hit a game-winning homer off me in July, a big emotional boost to the Red Sox in a game that featured a fight between Alex and Jason Varitek after Alex got hit with a pitch. Now he has gotten me again, and the fans in Fenway are loving it.

  I get out of the inning, but the damage is done, and it becomes much worse, when Ortiz, the hottest hitter on earth all through the playoffs, blasts a two-run homer in the bottom of the twelfth.

  The game lasts five hours and two minutes, and it not only gives the Red Sox a game, it gives them hope. In Game 5, we’re up, 4–2, in the eighth and lose in fourteen innings. We come back to the Bronx in Game 6, Schilling outpitches Lieber, and we lose, 4–2, and with each passing inning, we look tighter than spandex on a fat person.

  It’s as tangible as the interlocking N and Y in our logo. We are waiting for something bad to happen, mired in negative thinking. It’s another round of evidence of how the makeup of our team has changed. The guys from the championship years wouldn’t have succumbed to it. They would’ve found a way. This team does not. The Red Sox complete the greatest comeback in postseason baseball history with a 10–3 drubbing. A year after Aaron Boone, the Red Sox have four games’ worth of epic moments of their own, and nobody feels worse about it than I do.

  I am the one who left the door ajar, after all, blowing the save in the ninth inning of Game 4. That inning changes everything. But even as I leave Fenway Park and head back to our hotel that night, I have a very clear thought:

  We have a 3–1 lead. If we can’t win one more game, we don’t deserve to go to the World Series.

  And we didn’t.

  15

  Cheers and Jeers

  IT’S OPENING DAY IN Boston, April 11, 2005, and I am more popular than Paul Revere. The Boston Red Sox—the world champion Boston Red Sox—are getting their World Series rings and hoisting their championship flag, and wouldn’t you know it, the New York Yankees are in town for the occasion. One by one, we are introduced. Everybody gets booed, some more than others, Alex Rodriguez most of all. After Randy Johnson, No. 41, gets his booing, it is my turn to be on the Back Bay griddle.

  The public address announcer says:

  Number 42, Mariano Rivera…

  And the Fenway Park crowd goes nuts, people standing and cheering as I run onto the field, taking my spot next to Chien-Ming Wang and Randy. When I reach the baseline, I take off my cap and wave and bow. I laugh, and laugh some more, and the cheer keeps going, as if I were one of their own. Of course I know that I don’t rank with Ortiz or Damon in their hearts. Of course I know the cheer is derisive—that I am being saluted for my contributions to the Red Sox’s first world championship title in eighty-six years.

  And that is okay. I am willing to play along. My reaction is not phony in the least, and I’m not brimming with private rage. The fans are happy, and it is as great a day of celebration as Boston has had in a long time, and I can appreciate that. Their team won after making a historic comeback against their fiercest rivals.

  Why wouldn’t they want to celebrate? What would be the point of taking this as a personal affront? Let them rejoice. I will be doing all I can to get them out the next time, and perhaps to make me a bit less popular around town. In a way I actually enjoy watching the depth of the Sox fans’ Fenway celebration, its intensity fueled by passion and decades upon decades of perseverance. So it is easy to tip my cap and smile to thirty-three thousand people who are cheering at my expense, because this is not about me.

  There is Scripture, after all, that is setting me on the right path. In James 1:12, it says:

  Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.

  I have bigger matters to be concerned about than ovations in enemy ballparks as the 2005 season begins. The main one is getting booed in my own ballpark. I blow back-to-back saves against, yes, the Red Sox, during our opening home stand, and in the second of them, I am so ineffective (three walks, three singles, and five runs, one earned) that Mr. T comes and gets me, earning me a resounding Bronx cheer on my trip to the dugout. Some of my teammates are appalled that I got booed, but I don’t expect to get bouquets tossed my way when I don’t do my job. Why would I? Nor do I expect a lifetime pass because I’ve had a lot of saves. If people want to boo, they should go right ahead. It really doesn’t bother me at all.

  Much more than fan reaction, I turn my attention to improving the performance that triggers it. In other words, stop messing up. My whole issue is not having my usual command—a result, I’m sure, of the elbow tenderness that cost me time during the spring. I count on hitting spots, especially against the Red Sox, a patient team that sees me so much that it’s hard to surprise them with anything. In the outing that gets me booed, I throw thirty-eight pitches and only eighteen are strikes. If that’s not the worst ball-strike ratio of my career, I’d be surprised. The fans may be alarmed, but I am not. I know it’s a question of fine-tuning things. I throw more, tighten up my delivery, and I know the results will be there.

  I convert my next thirty-one save opportunities—a stretch of more than four months. One of the appearances comes in Detroit in early July, in a game that does my heart good. Bernie Williams is thirty-six now and is gradually being phased out as the regular center fielder. In a recent series against the Mets, we lose two of three at the Stadium, and Bernie drops a fly ball in right center in one game, lets a runner advance on another, and gets run on repeatedly. Mr. T says he wants to give Bernie a couple of days off to clear his head. Bernie doesn’t want time off but gets it anyway.

  You can’t call Bernie an unsung hero, not when he is a guy who to this day has more postseason RBIs (80) than anybody; when he has won a batting title and driven in a hundred runs five times; when he’s hit .435 in an ALCS, as he did against the Mariners in 2000. Lost in all the spilled ink about our ALCS collapse against the Red Sox in 2004 is that Bernie had ten runs batted in, two homers, and a .306 batting average in the seven games, all pretty much without a peep. This is one of the things I admire about him: He’s much more eager to play his guitar than sing his own praises.

  Bernie has never changed from the time I met him in 1990. There’s this innocence, almost an artist’s fragility, about him, not something you often see in star athletes. Ten minutes before first pitch, he’d be strumming chords on his guitar, as if it were going to be his main activity for the night.

  Like Derek, Jorge, Andy, and me, he comes through the farm system and does his work, and becomes one of the rarest commodities you can find—a switch-hitting All-Star center fielder who can hit f
or power and average, run, and field. I know he’s not the most gifted natural base runner, but I still love to see him in full stride, knees coming up high, almost prancing, a beautiful athlete flying gracefully around the bags.

  But the season has not been an easy time for Bernie. The Yankees are about to bring up Melky Cabrera to play center field, and more and more, Bernie is either a DH or nothing. Age happens to every athlete, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch when a player has been such a champion and brought so much honor and grace to the team.

  We’re only a .500 team (39–39) when we head into Comerica Park that afternoon, Mussina going against Sean Douglass, a six-foot-six right-hander.

  Bernie’s in and he singles in the fourth, the 2,154th hit of his career, moving him past Don Mattingly on the Yankee hits list, trailing only Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Joe DiMaggio. Then he belts a line-drive single to bring home two runs in the sixth. He hits another line-drive single off of Kyle Farnsworth in the eighth, and in the ninth, he breaks open a one-run game with a three-run home run off of Troy Percival.

  Bernie is the star of the game. And when the press comes in the clubhouse to talk to him, he is already gone. He has been a special teammate, and a big-time player for the Yankees for a long time. I am happy to see him have such a huge day.

  With the way the season started, getting hailed as a hero in Boston and botching those first two save chances against the Red Sox, I can’t imagine a better way to finish it off than being back in Fenway Park—to clinch another AL East title. I decide it’s time for another dugout appearance, a little impromptu motivation from a bullpen interloper. Let’s finish the job right now, I say. This is our division. Let’s leave it all out there today.