Last night, a little past 1 in the morning Eastern time, Russell Martin threw Ichiro out attempting to steal second base and Mariano Rivera had completed his 600th save of his career. And over the next week or so, he will pass Trevor Hoffman for the most career saves in history. This is a tremendous achievement by the universally acknowledged greatest closer of all time, so why is it being met with the same excitement as the season finale of Rizzoli & Isles? Ok, maybe that's exaggerating a bit, but in comparison to the unbelievable hype and excitement surrounding Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit, there's barely been a ripple in the media.
Part of this is probably because it's so inevitable that he would achieve this record (or stateau as some blogger types dub these kind of things). As I mentioned before, even the biggest Yankee hater douche bag has to admit that Mo is the greatest to ever be called a "closer". He's revolutionized the position with one pitch and is one of the main reasons that the Yanks have been so dominant since the mid 90s. Part of the reason this achievement is maybe being a little overlooked is the same reason that we don't really get too excited about Mariano's exploits during the season; We take him for granted. He's like airport security: The only time you hear about him is if he messes up.
I know football season is upon us, but I think we owe it to Mo to give him at least a fraction of the hoopla that surrounded DJ3K. When Enter Sandman starts up over these next couple of days, let's stop what we're doing and salute the only number 42 still playing. Let's get some MO602 t-shirts, and honor the greatest closer dead or alive.
I give him credit since he's the best at what he does, but the closer position isn't nearly as important as people make it out to be. It wasn't even in existence 20 years ago, before the game got watered down with all these relievers that come in to face 2 or 3 batters. If baseball were to go back to being a good sport, there would be 10 less teams in the league, a few hundred less players, and pitchers would be forced to go more than 6 innings.
ReplyDeleteMy point is, even though I love Mo, I'm not going to get too excited looking back over the career of a guy who pitched one inning every couple games.
It's true that it's a relatively new position but you could argue the Yanks wouldn't have won without the guy. Let's show some respect.
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