Too often we seem in such a hurry to bum-rush them off the stage. We don’t like it when our athletic icons compromise our memories of them. We want our lasting image of Joe Namath to be wagging that index finger in triumph as he ducks into an Orange Bowl tunnel, not struggling to keep his feet in the Day-Glo colors of the Los Angeles Rams.
We want Michael Jordan, forever, to execute that I’m-doing-this-simply-because-I-can reverse layup. We want to erase from our mind and from every video service all evidence he ever wore the vestments of the Washington Wizards.
We want Derek Jeter to be 25 years old forever, or Andy Pettitte, or Bernie Williams, or Jorge Posada, because if we can keep them young in our mind’s eye, then the rest of us can maintain the lie we’re forever young, too.
Thankfully, Mariano Rivera wouldn’t be rushed.
Thankfully, Mariano Rivera realized, better than anyone, the last thing he wanted to be remembered by was being pulled off the warning track at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium last spring, his knee torn apart, his season over, his career … well, he had been whispering that 2012 might be it for him, anyway. And rehabbing a knee is about as much fun as a month-long tax audit.
“I didn’t want to go out like that,” Rivera said not long ago. “I couldn’t.”
Wanting is one thing, of course. All athletes want to go out on their own terms, want to walk away while they can still run, want our memories of them to be as pristine in the final chapters as they were in the early ones. Few of them are able to do that.
It’s a terrible circle, really: if you’re still playing well, why would you ever want to stop playing? And yet how do you know when your tank is on empty until you push the career well past its expiration date?
We always laud Sandy Koufax and Jim Brown, as much because they quit their sports at the very peak of their performance as how remarkable they were at those peaks. But Koufax has said many times that if his left arm hadn’t betrayed him, he gladly would have pitched as many more years as he could have. And if Art Modell wasn’t the most stubborn man in football (except, perhaps, for Brown himself), and simply would have let Brown finish filming “The Dirty Dozen” without hassle, Brown would have kept punishing NFL defenses for the rest of the 1960s, at least.
Rivera?
He knew he had more to give. He knew his cutter still could slice a terrifying path toward overmatched hitters, still could shatter a forest of Louisville Sluggers, still could turn most ninth innings into laughable slaughters. That’s how he wanted to go out, leaning on his achievements, not propped up by crutches.
So this is his parting gift to us, and to himself.
For a while this year, it really did look as if Rivera was going to boggle even the most vivid imaginations. For two months, he piled up save after save, was rarely threatened, was barely even challenged. The Mets, of all teams, ended his run at perfection in late May, and there was a stretch in August when he blew three saves in a row for the first time, and then a slip-up against the Red Sox.
He wasn’t perfect, no. It’s an imperfect job, closer.
But, damn, he still was awfully good. He still could make major league hitters look hapless and helpless as they flailed away at the cutter, the pitch he has used 90 percent of the time, the pitch Rivera always has believed was nothing short of a gift hand-delivered by God. Even when Rivera was scuffling in late summer, his appearances in the ninth inning still filled Yankees fans with something almost no other fan base enjoys in the ninth innings of 4-3 games: confidence. Relief. Belief.
I mean, can you even imagine what it’s like watching Jim Johnson every day?
No, this was the perfect way for this to end for Mariano Rivera, with this season, one last tour around the league, one last reminder of who he has been, what he has been. It’s funny: Red Sox closer Koji Uehara just finished a stretch where he retired 37 straight hitters — essentially a perfect game plus 10 — and that alone is a streak even Rivera has never approached.
But it did, for the briefest moment, allow Red Sox fans to fully understand what Yankees fans have had in Rivera since 1997, and all but a few slippery spots in 2013, as well. Mariano Rivera wouldn’t be bumped off the stage until he was good and ready to go. Good for him. Better for us.