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Authors: Mariano Rivera

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Sports, #Rich & Famous, #Sports & Recreation, #Baseball, #General, #Biography & Autobiography / Sports, #Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous, #Sports & Recreation / Baseball / General

The Closer (8 page)

BOOK: The Closer
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It is the best kind of wisdom: Simple wisdom. This sort of wisdom, from the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, verse twelve:

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

My journey with the Lord begins with the help of my cousin Vidal Ovalle, in Puerto Caimito. I am eighteen years old at the time. Vidal and I see each other every day of our lives. We chase iguanas together and are on the fishing boat together. When I begin to see a striking change in him, I ask him about it.

I have come to know the Lord, he says. He shares Bible stories with me. I can feel his passion, and his peace and happiness. I have
known him his whole life, and it’s as if he is a different person now. It is not a fake. When we are out at sea, we talk about the Bible. Vidal is the first one to really teach me about the Bible, and what it means to know Jesus, and to know what he did for us, dying on the cross to forgive our sins. I listen, and I read the Bible, but I am taking spiritual baby steps, not quite ready to surrender. It isn’t until almost five years later that the Lord becomes the center of my life. You hear sometimes of people having a Great Awakening, a conversion experience full of white light or full-body trembling or the voice of God, or even all three. For me, it is much more understated.

I am in a small cement church near the center of Puerto Caimito, not far from the dock where my father keeps his boat. I am deep in prayer in a folding chair, thanking the Lord for His blessings, seeking His forgiveness for my shortcomings. The service is coming to a close.

Does anyone who hasn’t done so yet want to accept the Lord as their personal Savior? the pastor asks.

I hadn’t thought about this beforehand. I never asked myself: Is today going to be the day? I reflect on the pastor’s question. I wait a moment or two. I can feel my heart opening, being tender to the word of God. I can feel the Holy Spirit descending on me, very gently, touching my heart:

Come to me, my son, the Holy Spirit is saying.

I raise my hand.

Please come forward, the pastor says.

Somewhere deep inside me, there’s an epic Flesh vs. Spirit showdown for my soul.

Flesh: You realize that if you do this you will never have fun again, don’t you?

Spirit: This is about much more than fun. This is about having God’s grace and peace and mercy, now and always.

Flesh: You are about to lose all your friends, because they won’t have anything to do with you.

Spirit: If my friends don’t want to be with me anymore, maybe they aren’t the friends I want to have, anyway.

Flesh: Your life is going to turn into one long, grim prayer session where all you talk about is your horrible sins.

Spirit: My life is going to overflow with lightness and hope, and the joy of living with the Lord.

I walk forward. I am not nervous or hesitant at all. I am excited. I can feel the Holy Spirit with me, lifting me, propelling me, telling me: Accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, and you will have power and peace that you won’t even believe.

The pastor asks again if I am ready.

Yes, I am, I reply.

Soon he leads us in prayer, and already I can feel a burden being lifted. It is the burden of feeling you have to do it by yourself, of feeling alone and overwhelmed by your own limitations. I stand in the front of this tiny church in my tiny village and realize that the Lord is giving me a chance to be a different person, to free me from my sins, to be joyous and to be free.

The Bible says, Come as dirty as you are. Don’t clean yourself up or fix yourself up. Come with all your anxieties, all of your imperfections. The Lord will give you peace. He will take care of everything. All you have to do is want Him, and seek Him with a pure heart. He will take care of everything. You can’t do it. I can’t do it. But the Lord can.

Everything is in the hands of the Lord. All our days are in the hands of the Lord. I woke up today. You woke up today. Today is the day we have been given. I thank God for that. I do not take it for granted. Today is all we have. This exact moment is all we have. It is the way I want to pitch, and it is the way I want to live. Put everything we have into living this moment the best way we can live it. Again, it is simple. Simple is best.

I am starting the next day against the White Sox, the second best-hitting team in the American League. From the moment I walk in Comiskey Park that day, I feel completely at peace. I feel no pressure, just want to go out there and be me, and play the game I love. Already I am learning that when you tell yourself,
I have to do this and that, I must prove myself right now,
all it does is make it harder for you to perform your best. I have the Lord with me, no matter what happens. I lose the urgency, and all it does is change everything.

I can’t say that I know I am throwing that much harder than I was in my previous call-up, but I can tell by how hitters are swinging that I am bringing it, and they are not expecting it. I cruise through four innings with one hit—a Frank Thomas single—and five strikeouts. Paul O’Neill belts a homer off of Alex Fernandez to give me a 1–0 lead, and a Luis Polonia sacrifice fly makes it 2–0 after five.

After six innings, I have given up only two hits, both to Thomas, and then I strike out the side in the seventh, getting Ron Karkovice and Warren Newson for the third time apiece.

With the lead now 3–0 in the eighth, I am still coming at them hard. I get Ozzie Guillen to bounce out and Lance Johnson to pop out and Dave Martinez to strike out. It is my eleventh strikeout of the night. When I get into the dugout, Buck Showalter comes over and pats me on the back.

Great job, Mariano. You were tremendous. I’m going to give the ball to Wetteland for the ninth.

Thank you, I say.

If there is any revelation for me against the White Sox, it is that all I have to do is be me. Not do anything more. Somebody tells me later that a few of the Sox hitters complained because the scouting
reports they got on me were all wrong. The reports said I threw in the mid-to high eighties, not the mid-nineties.

Well, they are a few weeks out of date.

I stay with the big club the rest of the season, and we clinch the first American League wild-card berth by winning eleven of our last twelve games, and draw the Seattle Mariners in the American League Division Series. It’s an emotionally charged time around the Yankees, a joyful time, and I can tell that even though I just arrived. This isn’t just the first postseason series for the Yankees in fourteen years, it’s the first playoff series ever for the great Don Mattingly, and everybody is thrilled for him. I have only known Donnie for a few months, but it’s plenty long enough for me to have deep admiration for his humility and his work ethic, for the way he carries himself. He is a man who does everything the right way, and treats people the right way.

He is a man you want to be like.

We win Game 1 at the Stadium behind David Cone, before a taut Game 2 is tied after nine and moves into extra innings with the score tied at four. Before the top of the twelfth, a call goes to the bullpen.

Get Rivera up.

I start getting loose. I feel good. I like the way the ball is coming out of my hand.

Ken Griffey Jr. hits a home run off John Wetteland to give the Mariners a 5–4 lead. When Wetteland walks the next hitter, Buck calls for me. I run in from the bullpen, across the outfield, for the biggest pitching test of my life. I am a fisherman’s son from Puerto Caimito, about to dive into the hottest cauldron I could ever imagine. And I can’t wait. I love the stakes, love that so much is riding on every pitch, love that the Stadium is as charged as a 60,000-seat electrical socket.

Maybe it’s the training on my father’s fishing boat, I don’t know. On the boat, if we didn’t catch fish, we wouldn’t make any money. We had to come through. We had to find a way.

The playoffs feel the same way to me.

I strike out Jay Buhner, the former Yankee, to end the threat.

In the bottom of the twelfth, we are down to our final out when Ruben Sierra rips a double to left to tie the game, and now it’s up to me to hold it. I have an easy thirteenth inning and strike out the side in the fourteenth. I get Griffey on a flyout to center, retiring eight straight batters, before giving up singles in the fifteenth to Edgar Martinez and Buhner. I strike out Doug Strange but now fall behind Tino Martinez, 3–0, with two men on. I throw a fastball and he has the green light. He hits a fly ball to center.

Threat extinguished.

My first postseason outing concludes with three and a third innings of scoreless relief.

Minutes later, with one man on and one man out in the bottom of the fifteenth, Jim Leyritz steps up to the plate. He rocks a two-run homer into the right-center-field bleachers, and as I watch its flight in the dugout and listen to the building roar all around me, I think only one thing:

This is the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in my life.

It almost feels as if the Stadium is lifting off of River Avenue. We are up two games to none, and I get the victory. It is hard to even comprehend where I am, and what I am doing.

The Lord’s blessings only get richer every day.

The series moves to Seattle, and the Mariners take the third and fourth games. In the eighth inning of Game 5, after the last of David Cone’s amazing 147 pitches, a ball four forces in a run to tie it. Buck gives me the ball. The bases are loaded and Mike Blowers is at the plate.

Four months earlier, I was a Columbus Clipper who had washed
out in his first big league audition. Now I have the outcome of an entire postseason series hanging on my every pitch. The pressure is immense, but I feel none of it. This is no time to think about how fast, or how far, I’ve come. I have a hitter to get out. I lock in on Mike Stanley’s glove. I am back in the tube.

I strike Mike Blowers out on three pitches.

We wind up losing in the eleventh inning, when Edgar Martinez belts a two-run double down the left-field line off of Jack McDowell. It is a brutal ending, an ending I never see coming. My insides go cold watching the Mariners celebrate right in front of us. I was sure that we were winning this series, that it would be us doing the dancing. But along with the sting, there is also a resolve that borders on defiance:

We will learn from this. We will be back. We will prevail.

With the passage of a little time, it’s impossible for me not to feel heartened by what happens in 1995. I don’t know where the Lord’s grace and mercy will take me from here, but I know it will be rich, and know that I am not alone. After all, I begin the year as a question mark with a shaky history of injury, a Triple-A pitcher all the way. I finish it with five and a third scoreless innings and eight strikeouts in postseason competition for the New York Yankees, in
las Grandes Ligas,
in the greatest city in the world, playing a game I learned on a beach. It’s all part of the Lord’s plan, and I am loving it.

Relief and Belief

I
HAVE A NEW
pitching home in 1996, and I spend the next 1,096 appearances of my career there. It’s called the bullpen. I guess if you put me against a wall and force me to answer, I’d say I slightly prefer starting, but whatever the club needs, I will do my best.

It’s a season of major transition for the Yankees. We have a new manager, Joe Torre. A new ace in twenty-four-year-old Andy Pettitte. A new shortstop in twenty-one-year-old Derek Jeter, as well as a new first baseman, former Mariner Tino Martinez, and a new catcher—a smart, solid guy named Joe Girardi. You never know how it’s all going to piece together, and I guess George Steinbrenner isn’t so sure himself, which is why the Yankees are in talks with the Mariners about trading me for their shortstop, Felix Fermin. Steinbrenner apparently has questions about whether Derek is ready to take over and wants Fermin as an insurance policy. I have no clue the talks are going on, and don’t want to know. Some players obsess about this stuff, and want to be on top of every last trade rumor and bit of speculation. But I am the exact opposite. To me, such rumors can only be a distraction, and in my worldview as a pitcher, distractions are the enemy.

If it’s not going to help me get people out, why even bother paying attention?

My main focus in the spring is making a strong first impression on the new manager. I have never heard of Joe Torre, know nothing of his playing career, his MVP award, his Brooklyn boyhood, or his previous managerial stops. Buck Showalter, my previous skipper, has seen me for years in the Yankee system, and I knew he was a big supporter of mine. When the Yankees decide to let Buck go and bring in Mr. T—it’s what I call him even now—I get fired up for keen competition to win a bullpen spot. There is a boatload of relievers in camp. I am just one of the deckhands. Just because I did well in the playoffs the year before, I take nothing for granted, in spring training or that year.

In my first outing of the regular season, I throw two scoreless innings with two strikeouts against the Rangers and feel as good as I ever have on the mound. It’s almost embarrassing, but I still basically have a repertoire of one pitch, my years in the laboratory—trying to develop a trustworthy slider and serviceable changeup—having yielded no breakthrough. So my arsenal consists of a four-seam fastball.

When I want to mix it up, I throw a… four-seam fastball.

I bet I don’t throw even ten sliders the whole season. It doesn’t seem to matter. I have easy heat with late movement, and usually can put it exactly where I want.

Six weeks into 1996, I have an ERA of 0.83. I throw fifteen straight no-hit innings at one point. During a midseason hot streak in which we win eight of nine, I strike out three Red Sox—Troy O’Leary, Lee Tinsley, and Jeff Frye—on twelve pitches, and I get the hold for Wetteland. Soon there is a lot of clamoring that I should be named to Mike Hargrove’s All-Star staff. Hargrove passes on me, and if Yankee fans get all worked up about it, I do not. It simply doesn’t bother me. It’s another gift the Lord has seen fit to grant me. I’m just not wired that way.

All I want to do is get back to Panama for the All-Star break to see Clara, who is pregnant with our second son, Jafet.

I finish the year pretty much the way I start it, with a 2.09 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 107 innings; I even finish third in the Cy Young voting for the league’s best pitcher. We win the American League East and draw the Rangers in the division series. The Rangers win Game 1 at the Stadium, 6–2, so it makes the second game even more important, if we want to avoid going to Texas having to sweep.

Andy goes into the seventh and then I get the ball from Mr. T. We are down, 4–2. I strike out Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez on three fastballs and then get Rusty Greer to ground out. I face eight Rangers in all, and get all eight of them, including Juan Gonzalez, the league’s Most Valuable Player that year and a guy who already has two homers and four RBIs in the game, and three homers for the series. Gonzalez is in one of those zones hitters get into—when the ball looks as big as a cantaloupe, and they don’t
think,
they
know,
that they can hit anything. Pitchers get in zones, too, though. And I am in one, a place where you are completely committed to every pitch you throw, and you know you can put it exactly where you want. Gonzalez hit a homer off me the year before, so I know just how dangerous he can be. Unlike most sluggers against me, he also almost always makes contact; I would strike him out only one time in twenty-four career at-bats. He is a very good low fastball hitter, so I try to keep the ball up and away from the middle of the plate. I get him to ground out to short to lead off the eighth.

We wind up tying the game in the eighth on Cecil Fielder’s soft single, and winning it in the twelfth after Derek smacks a leadoff hit and scores on an errant throw.

We have been a resilient team all season, never quitting, always fighting back, and we demonstrate it again in Game 3, in Texas,
when we’re down a run in the ninth and score twice on a long sac fly from Bernie Williams, who is almost as hot as Gonzalez, and Mariano Duncan’s single. Wetteland closes it out, and one game later, I throw two more scoreless innings as we take a 5–4 lead into the ninth. Bernie hits his second homer of the game, and in the bottom of the ninth, Wetteland whiffs Dean Palmer to close the series out.

We move into the ALCS against the Baltimore Orioles, and right away we have to come back again. In Game 1, we fall behind by two runs and don’t get even until Derek hits an opposite-field home run off Armando Benitez in the bottom of the eighth, a Yankee Stadium special and a Jeffrey Maier special, too. No, it wasn’t a legitimate home run, and yes, the eleven-year-old kid interferes with it, and the Orioles have every right to argue, but what can you do? You keep fighting, that’s all. I get Mike Devereaux to ground out to get out of a jam in the tenth, and then strike out the tough Roberto Alomar to end the eleventh, and then three minutes later, Bernie wraps a 1–1 pitch from Randy Myers around the left-field foul pole to seal a 5–4 victory.

The Orioles square the series at one by taking Game 2, and then we head to Camden Yards, where Jimmy Key pitches a masterpiece in Game 3. Then, in Game 4, our bullpen—David Weathers, Graeme Lloyd, me, and Wetteland—throws six shutout innings after Kenny Rogers is cuffed around early. We go up, 3–1. I don’t do it the easy way, though; I load the bases on three singles, and then strike out Brady Anderson and Chris Hoiles, going up the ladder and getting them to chase high fastballs, then getting Todd Zeile to pop up. Andy finishes off the Orioles in Game 5 by pitching three-hit ball over eight innings, and Jim Leyritz, Fielder, and Darryl Strawberry all homer in a six-run third off of Scott Erickson to put us into the World Series against the Atlanta Braves.

You’d think that being in my first World Series would bring a whole new level of pressure, but that is not the case at all. The way the year went, we expected to be in the Series. If we had fallen short, that would’ve been crushing, so it was almost as if the pressure felt greater in the two rounds of American League playoffs.

You never would know that by the way the Series begins, though, with the Braves playing the role of tractor and the Yankees playing the role of dirt clump. We lose two games at home by a combined score of 16–1, mostly because Andruw Jones, a nineteen-year-old kid from Curaçao (practically a Central American neighbor), crushes two homers in Game 1, and the Braves’ starting rotation—one of the best ever—is as good as everybody says. John Smoltz shuts us down in the first game, Greg Maddux in the second. I am in awe watching these guys, especially Maddux. He is a master craftsman, whittling here and whittling there, carving us up before we even know it. He throws eighty-two pitches in eight innings. He goes to a three-ball count on only two batters the whole game. In the fourth inning, he sets down the heart of our order on six pitches. He does what great artists in every line of work do.

He makes it look easy.

The Series switches to Atlanta, and we win Game 3 behind David Cone (I give up my first postseason run), but we are in big trouble with only five outs to go in Game 4, down 6–3—five outs from being down three games to one, and having to face Smoltz and Tom Glavine in the next two games. I am getting loose in the bullpen as the eighth inning begins, with Charlie Hayes leading off against Mark Wohlers, one of the most dominant, and one of the hardest-throwing, closers in the game.

Hayes hits a swinging bunt that teeters along the third-base line and somehow stays fair. Then Darryl Strawberry rips a line drive to left and we have two runners on. I keep throwing to Mike Borzello,
the bullpen catcher, as Mariano Duncan hits what looks to be an automatic double-play ball to Rafael Belliard, the Braves’ shortstop.

Belliard bobbles it and only gets one. It brings up Leyritz, a tremendous fastball hitter who likes to be in the batter’s box in clutch situations. He’d hit that huge homer against the Mariners the previous October, and homered in the clinching game against the Orioles. Leyritz has never faced Wohlers before.

What’s Wohlers got? Leyritz asks Chris Chambliss, the hitting coach.

He’s got a one-hundred-mile-per-hour fastball, Chambliss says.

Leyritz steps in, using one of Strawberry’s bats. On Wohlers’s first pitch, Leyritz is right on the fastball, then takes a slider for a ball. On the 1–1 pitch, Wohlers throws another slider, up and over the plate, and Leyritz extends and drives it deep to left. Andruw Jones climbs the left-field wall, but the ball is beyond his reach. The game is tied, and as Leyritz fist-pumps his way around the bases, I know it’s on me to make sure it stays tied.

I pitch a scoreless eighth, and get one out in the ninth. Graeme Lloyd picks me up, getting Fred McGriff to hit into a double play, and we go on to win in ten.

In Game 5, Andy outduels Smoltz in a game neither deserves to lose, and the 1–0 victory takes us back to Yankee Stadium with a 3–2 lead. We finally get to Maddux with three runs in the third, and we still have a 3–1 lead when I come in. It’s the seventh inning, and I am not changing anything now. I am throwing heat and throwing it in the best locations I can, and I plow through two innings, retiring six straight after walking Terry Pendleton to open the seventh, and then leave it to Wetteland. He gives up three singles and a run and the Braves have the tying run on second when Wetteland gets Mark Lemke to pop a foul ball behind third, where Charlie Hayes catches it.

The Series is ours.

From the top step of the dugout, I sprint to the mound and get there almost before Charlie comes down from his jump. It’s the Yankees’ first World Series title in eighteen years, and my first World Series title ever, and for three guys from Columbus—Derek, Andy, and me—to play such important roles makes it that much sweeter. To be in that pile and celebrate after we had to come back again to beat a team as good as the Braves is an indescribable feeling.

After the season ends, the Yankees decide I am ready to close games and let Wetteland, a free agent, sign with the Rangers. I minimize the difference in the roles publicly, insisting I feel no added pressure, but the truth is that I
do
feel pressure. I want to prove that the Yankees did the right thing; I want to show everybody that I can do it. I want not only to be as good as John Wetteland. I want to be better than him.

The ’97 season does not start well. We win only five of our first fifteen games. I blow three of the first six save opportunities I have. Through the first nine innings of the season, I give up fourteen hits and four runs.

The most recent slipup comes against the Angels at the Stadium, and the guy who gets me is Jim Leyritz, of all people. Traded about six weeks after his homer against Wohlers, Leyritz whacks a two-run double down the left-field line. After the game, Mr. T calls me into his office. Mel Stottlemyre, the pitching coach, is with him. I have a pretty good idea that they don’t want to talk about the stock market. I know I haven’t been doing the job. I know that if it keeps up this way, they are going to have to make a change.

I’m sorry I’ve blown so many games. I am not sure what’s wrong. I feel good but I am not getting the results, I tell them.

Mr. T says, Mo, do you know what you need to do? You need to be Mariano Rivera. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less. It looks to us like you’re trying to be perfect.

You’ve gotten away from what has made you so successful, Mel says. By trying to do too much, you are taking away some of your aggressiveness and hurting your command.

You are our closer. You are our guy, and we want you to be our guy, and that is not going to change, okay? Mr. T says.

I feel an immediate sense of relief. I look both of them in the eye, first Mr. T and then Mel.

Thank you, I say. Knowing you still have faith in me means so much.

One of the great ironies about sports is that trying too hard to succeed is about the surest way to bring on failure. Joe and Mel are exactly right. I still have the same arm, the same stuff, but pushing myself to be better or faster than I was before is only hurting me. You have to get out of your own way sometimes and just let your body do what it does naturally.

As I walk out of Mr. T’s office, I feel about 10,000 tons lighter. I make a vow to myself to remember what he and Mel told me. And I devise my own little trick to help: I am not going to even think about what inning it is. Whether it’s the seventh or eighth inning, the way it was a year ago, or the ninth inning, the way it is this year, I still have a ball, the hitter still has a bat, and my only job is still to get him out, one pitch at a time.

I’ve had a great deal of success since the end of 1995 in getting big league hitters out. So why change anything? Why focus differently? That’s what I need to keep in mind.

The payoff from the meeting is immediate. I stop trying to be Wetteland and stop demanding perfection, and run off twelve straight saves. I am getting completely comfortable with the new role now, and by the time we head into Tiger Stadium for a three-game series in late June, the insecurities are behind me.

BOOK: The Closer
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