Joe Nathan figures he missed the pregame memo. Maybe even the in-game memo. So when did manager Jim Leyland tell Nathan he would be closing out the All-Star Game.
“He still hasn’t,” Nathan said, claiming he found out he was pitching the ninth “when I was running in” from the bullpen. “It was a surprise party for me.”
So Nathan, who has recorded 328 saves in his career, got his first All-Star save last night following the greatest set-up man ever, Mariano Rivera. Leyland wanted to be certain Rivera had his moment. So Leyland employed Rivera in the eighth inning in the future Hall of Famer’s final All-Star Game, an American League 3-0 win.
“Obviously it would have been even better in the ninth with him. But we got him in the game we got him his moment and we got a win,” said Nathan.
When Rivera came in to his “Enter Sandman” theme, the players waited and stayed back. They let Rivera soak in the moment on the mound as the largest Citi Field crowd ever let loose an outpouring of admiration.
“We just waited. When he got to the mound after a while someone said, ‘Hey, he needs a catcher, let’s go,’ ” said Kansas City’s Salvador Perez who caught Rivera’s 1-2-3, 16-pitch eighth.
Next came a diet of cut fastballs.
“Only pitch I called,” Perez said. “He just told me, ‘It’s easy to catch me.’ So I just call it out and away, called it inside.”
And when Rivera walked off the mound to a thunderous cheer, the first All-Star mate he encountered was Detroit’s Justin Verlander. The two embraced.
“He gave me a hug. I wasn’t planning that. I didn’t want to be the first one out there,” Verlander said. “It just kind of happened that way. It was surreal for me. I just wanted to give him his respect, the respect he deserves. I was standing out there and was the first one he came to. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
And then Nathan came on to close it out.
“It made such a special moment for everyone to give credit to a guy that has done so much, a legend in this game,” Nathan said. “Hopefully, he has taught a bunch of people how to act as human beings, as baseball players. What he does for people in the game people outside the game, he’s a hero.”