Mariano Rivera saved 652 games, the most in baseball history, and did it with essentially one pitch. Everyone knew the cutter was coming. Almost no one ever hit it.
DID YOU KNOW?
More men have walked on the moon (12) than scored an earned run against Rivera in the postseason (11). His October ERA over 141 innings: 0.70.
He came from Puerto Caimito, Panama, a fisherman's son who signed with the Yankees in 1990 for a $3,000 bonus. He was a starter then, and not much of one - a skinny right-hander throwing 88, 89 miles an hour. The Yankees nearly traded him more than once. In 1995 they moved him to the bullpen, and by 1996 he was the most devastating setup man alive, striking out 130 in 107 innings for the championship club that started the dynasty.
The Gift
The cutter was an accident. In June 1997, playing catch with teammate Ramiro Mendoza at Tiger Stadium, Rivera's fastball suddenly started diving at the last instant. He could not stop it from happening. Then he decided he did not want to. "It was a gift from God," he said, and he meant it literally.
For the next 16 seasons, that one pitch was enough. Hitters knew it was coming - everyone in the park knew - and it still sawed bats in half at the handle. Rivera's postseason record with it is the closest thing baseball has to a statistical miracle: a 0.70 ERA and 42 saves across 96 October games, closing out four World Series and winning the 1999 Series MVP and 2003 ALCS MVP along the way.
The Numbers
The career totals are all records, or nearly: 652 saves, 952 games finished, a 2.21 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP across 19 seasons - the lowest ERA of any live-ball-era pitcher with that much work. Thirteen All-Star selections. Five championship rings, from the 1998 machine to the 2009 title, which ended with him on the mound at the old Stadium's replacement, fittingly recording the final outs.
He was also the last player in baseball to wear number 42 every day, grandfathered after the league retired it for Jackie Robinson - an honor he carried with visible pride and, by universal agreement, worthiness.
The Vote
In January 2019, the writers made him the first unanimous selection in Hall of Fame history: all 425 ballots, 100 percent. Babe Ruth did not get that. Nobody had. Rivera cried at the announcement and spent the summer making sure everyone knew he shared it.
There is an argument that no athlete in any sport was ever as certain a thing as Mariano Rivera with a ninth-inning lead. Enter Sandman would hit, the bullpen door would open, and the game was, for all practical purposes, over. Nineteen years, and it never got old. The broken bats piled up by the thousand - the Yankees reportedly saved money on replacement lumber alone - and the save totals kept climbing until there was no one left to chase.
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Sources: Baseball Hall of Fame (Rivera profile and unanimous 2019 election) · Baseball-Reference.com (career and postseason records) · MLB.com (Rivera player page) · BBWAA (2019 Hall of Fame voting results)
Photo: [Keith Allison](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mariano_Rivera_pitching_closeup_July_2007.jpg) via Wikimedia Commons, [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).
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