With Spring just around the corner, it’s time to take a break
from the dreaded deprivations of sequestration and concentrate, of
course, on baseball. And so, the other day a few friends and I
gathered to watch Eight Men Out which is, to my mind, the
best baseball movie ever made; crammed as it is with great acting,
great writing, and great baseball scenes, not to mention a fairly
accurate depiction of the Black Sox scandal which led to a granite
rule of the game: gambling and gamblers will not be tolerated.
Eight Men Out should be required viewing for those who
think that baseball in its earlier days was never a business or
that players and owners were motivated only by love for the game.
And it might help those who are constantly clamoring for admitted
gambler Pete Rose to be reinstated to baseball and duly elected to
its Hall of Fame, to realize that better players than he will also
never darken the doorstep of Cooperstown.
Yes, the history of baseball is replete with miserly owners,
money-hungry players, and crooks and cheaters of all kinds; kind of
like the world in general. Yet baseball has been blessed with many
more athletes who have been a credit to the game, though with the
recent PED scandals they seem fewer and fewer. Why it is that so
many talented athletes are so morally flawed that they would risk
putting various and sundry chemicals in their bodies for a taste of
fleeting glory or worse, for money? Are there any players with that
rare combination of supreme performance both on and off the field
left in today’s game?
Well, we have had, and will have for one more year, just such a
player. The announcement by Mariano Rivera of his upcoming
retirement gives us a chance to reflect that we have been witnesses
of such a sublime melding of physical and spiritual grace on the
diamond. For more than 18 seasons, fans of the New York Yankees
have cheered his appearances while all others have dreaded
them.
They say that nothing in life is guaranteed except death and
taxes, but I would add the quick and lethal dispatch of batters
facing “Mo” Rivera to that list. It has been my contention that the
average Yankee fan has missed many of his regular season saves;
either getting up to fetch a snack or beckoning the bartender for
another celebratory drink while he made short work of the ninth
inning. He has been that reliable. Baseball is a sport that relies
more on numbers than any other, but it only takes one word to sum
up the career of Rivera: inevitability.
Now, some would say that Rivera benefited from great setup
pitchers throughout his career; but seriously, can anyone doubt
that it is most probably the other way around? In the same way that
a great hitter ensures better pitches for those hitting around him,
so too with Rivera. How often did an opposing manager begin
sweating with his team trailing the Yanks in the later innings;
using up his bench while his players swung wildly in desperation
knowing that their scoring opportunities were diminishing with
every pitch? My husband, an inveterate Yankee-hater, has said that
Joe Torre only became a great manager when he merely had to manage
six-inning games.
Yet there is more to Rivera than the fluid and seemingly
effortless delivery of his devastating cut fastball. He is a
terrific fielder, no doubt going back to his boyhood days as a
shortstop in his native Panama. Add to this his longevity — he has
outlasted not only the prime years of his competitors, but their
entire careers — and you have the perfect relief pitcher.
But more than this, Rivera is, what they called in the old days,
a perfect gentleman. His gracious comportment on the mound and his
humble demeanor in press conferences all but shout that he is a
committed Christian, and so he is. In fact, his goal in retirement
is to become a minister, where he will no doubt deliver the Good
News with the same elegant ease as his famed cutter.
Are there other good guys in baseball? Sure, but it’s hard to
name another who lives out his reputation as the game’s greatest
closer and its best moral representative every time he toes the
rubber. He is indeed an anomaly in today’s world: a man who is the
best that ever was at his profession, yet openly acknowledges that
his talents are no credit to himself, but that they are gifts from
above.
The lords of baseball may one day decide to cave to the modern
world’s desire for the relaxation of its moral rules — as have so
many institutions in this country — and indeed reinstate Rose and
the Black Sox, thus further cheapening the game’s integrity; but
the great Rivera will endure.
Photo: UPI
