It hurts worse when our icons say farewell, because they are the ones who define our own lives as fans. It can be baseball, yes: Mariano Rivera yesterday, Mickey Mantle in spring training of 1969, Joe DiMaggio after the 1951 World Series, Willie Mays after the ’73 World Series.
But it isn’t limited to that. Joe Willie grew old, and Clyde, and Gretzky. Johnny Carson retired in 1991 and in some ways TV hasn’t felt nearly the same ever since. The 1960s may have ended, for the record, on Dec. 31, 1969, but the last rites weren’t really administered until April 10, 1970, the day the Beatles broke up. And they probably weren’t committed forever to the history books until Dec. 8, 1980, the night John Lennon was murdered.
No, as long as we have our icons, as long as they are young and doing wondrous things, then we are allowed to lie to ourselves, to ignore the birth certificate, the graying of hair and the thickening of waist. It’s part of why we invest so much of ourselves in those idols. We live vicariously through them, yes, but that’s only part of it, wishing we could drive like Tiger and fly like Michael and tackle like LT.
Mostly, they allow us insulation from the calendar.
PHOTOS: YANKEES SPRING TRAINING
If Mariano Rivera is still throwing his cutter by the world, then surely we’ll always be what we ever wanted to be: young, vibrant, the road far longer in front of us than behind. We come to terms quickly with the other harsh realities of sport, the itinerant nature of players, coaches coming and going, entire franchises picking up stakes and moving thousands of miles away.
It’s the icons that latch onto our souls. It’s someone like Mariano Rivera, who without question has done his job — throwing the ninth inning of baseball games — better than any man who ever lived. His quiet nature probably precluded him from becoming more of a pop culture cornerstone — like his buddy, Derek Jeter — but the sheer dominance of his talent made up much of the difference.
Make no mistake: Whenever the time comes for Jeter to make the kind of announcement Rivera will make tomorrow morning at Steinbrenner Field, there will be an even greater, even broader sense of melancholy descending upon the city, simply because of Jeter’s ubiquitous presence on and off the field since 1996.
But Rivera beat him to The Bronx by a year, will beat him to Cooperstown, and will forever hold a firm anchor on the souls of Yankees fans who marveled at his excellence for so long, it’s hard for many of them to remember a time when they didn’t fret through ninth innings the way most baseball fans do. Jeter is an all-time great, but even his most ardent acolyte acknowledge there have been other shortstops as good, or better.
Rivera? He was peerless, and he was reliable, and maybe we let ourselves believe he would keep throwing that cutter forever. Because if he could stay young, so could we.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com