MLB

Rangers’ farewell gift reunites Mo with ‘mentor’

ARLINGTON, Texas — These Mariano Rivera tributes on the road have been delightful. The Indians, sharing a city with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, gave him a framed gold record of “Enter Sandman.” The Twins, reflecting manager Ron Gardenhire’s sense of humor, created a rocking chair made of broken bats.

It won’t shock you to learn that, before Rivera saved the Yankees’ 2-0 victory over Texas at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, the Rangers presented the Yankees’ retiring closer yesterday with a cowboy hat and a pair of cowboy boots stitched with a Yankees logo, as well as a $5,000 donation to Rivera’s foundation. A fitting cliché, right? Nevertheless, this might very well go down as Rivera’s favorite of all the salutes, because of who participated in the presentation.

“I wasn’t going to miss today. Period,” John Wetteland said in a news conference following the ceremony, in which Rangers CEO Nolan Ryan and Texas closer Joe Nathan also participated. “That’s not going to happen. Obviously, I love Mariano to death. There’s a lot of history there. A lot of great moments. A lot of neat things shared.”

“It was wonderful. It was great to see him,” said Rivera, who picked up his 33rd save in 35 opportunities. “He’s my mentor when I was there with us. To see him again was great. We chatted a little bit, talked about those old times.”

When the Yankees recalled Rivera from Triple-A Columbus for his major-league debut in 1995 — a starting assignment — Wetteland was the Yankees’ veteran closer. During Wetteland’s time with the Yankees, through the 1996 season, Rivera evolved from a spot starter to a long reliever to one of the best setup men in baseball history.

That motivated the Yankees to let 1996 World Series Most Valuable Player Wetteland sign in December of ’96 with the Rangers — he is a member of the team’s Hall of Fame and lives in the area — and promote Rivera to closing duties for 1997.

For Rivera, a man not prone to hyperbole, to describe Wetteland as his “mentor” is no small thing. “That’s the way I feel about him,” he said. “In ’95, I was a rookie, in ’96 I was the setup man, and I always watched him. I didn’t say much, but I always watched. I was attached to him like a leech.

“I learned a lot from him about how to pitch, especially in the playoffs. It was great for me to have him there.”

When the two men chatted yesterday, “’I told him, you never said a word, but you were always watching everybody,’” Wetteland said. “He goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, I was taking in everything I could.’

“So when you look back from where he started and the process of how Mariano Rivera — not this scared kid, but this wide-eyed kid — becomes far and away the greatest closer who ever lived, you can kind of see it now.”

Wetteland recalled Rivera as “hittable” in those early major-league days. “Because when I first saw him pitch, he was still a starter. It was fastball, slider, change-up. … He really lacked kind of that second pitch that was good enough to offset it as a starter, or the combination of a second and third pitch. I saw him get hit around quite a bit.”

Not long after, Rivera developed his cut fastball — “The separator,” Wetteland called it. Wetteland told Rivera “not to get beat on your third-best pitch,” and that hasn’t been a problem

Asked how it felt to see Rivera blossom, Wetteland said, “Like what I set out to do, got done.”

How meaningful that he could join the yearlong party, for a day, to celebrate what got done.