The Closer (9 page)

Who had any idea what would be ahead of me?

I am playing catch with Ramiro Mendoza, my fellow pitcher and fellow Panamanian, a couple of hours before the game. We are in front of our dugout. Our catch is no different from hundreds of other games of catch I’ve had. As I get loose, I start to throw a bit harder. I am feeling good. I catch Ramiro’s throw and, heating up now, I fire it back to him.

My throw seems to surprise him. He has to move his glove at the last moment to catch it.

Hey, stop playing around, Ramiro says.

What are you talking about? I’m not playing around.

I’m talking about the ball you just threw. It almost hit me.

I just threw a normal ball, I say.

Well, it didn’t look normal to me.

We keep playing catch. I throw the ball to him again and the same thing happens. It breaks about a foot right when it is on top of him, and again he almost misses it completely.

That’s what I’m talking about, he says. Stop doing that.

I promise in the name of the Lord I am not doing anything, I reply.

I make several more throws to Ramiro and every one of them has the same wicked movement at the end.

You better go find somebody else to catch you, he says, finally. I don’t want to get hurt.

He’s serious. Our game of catch is over.

I have no idea what just happened, and no idea why the ball is moving this way. I am not aware of doing a single thing different. I head to the bullpen, which is on the field at old Tiger Stadium, and throw to Mike Borzello. My ball—what I think is my regular four-seam fastball—is doing the same thing that it did with Ramiro.

Whoa! Where did that come from? Borzi says. He’s sure something is wrong with the baseball—that it has a scuff that’s making it move this way. He throws it aside and gets a new ball.

The same thing happens. Borzi holds up his hands.

What’s going on? What are you doing? he asks.

I don’t know. I am just throwing my regular four-seam fastball, I say, showing him my grip.

We talk again after the game, and agree to go back in the bullpen early the next day and try to figure this out. The pitch keeps cutting, hard and late. Now I’m getting concerned.

Borzi, this isn’t good. We’ve got to straighten this pitch because I have almost no command of it at all.

Mel Stottlemyre joins the conversation and closely observes me throwing. We look at my grip, my arm angle, everything. We cannot get me to throw this pitch straight.

For two weeks, maybe three, we work to do just that. We fiddle with my grip and release point. It’s as if the ball has a mind of its own, because it keeps moving late, on a horizontal plane, boring in on left-handed hitters and away from righties. As we tinker, I continue to pitch in games, and the more I throw this new pitch, the more I begin to get command of it. I am starting to throw it for strikes.

I am starting to come to the realization that it’s absurd to try to throw the ball straight.

Whoever heard of a pitcher trying to get less movement on the ball? The whole thing is crazy.

And this is how my cut fastball, or cutter, is born. It is as if it is dropped straight from the heavens, as if I were out on my father’s boat and a million pounds of fish just swam into our nets, the radar gone a deep, deep red.

How can I explain it any other way than as one more incredible gift from the Lord?

I do not spend years searching for this pitch. I do not ask for it, or pray for it. All of a sudden it is there, a devastating baseball weapon. It is not a pitch I had yesterday. But it is a pitch I have
today and that I would have until the end. I am throwing the ball across the seams with what feels like the littlest bit more pressure on the ball from my middle finger, and my fastball now has this wicked tail on it. How does this happen? Why does this happen? Why not somebody else? I don’t know the answers, except to say that the Lord must’ve had a plan, because He always has a plan. And it is some plan.

All it does is change my whole career.

By midseason, I have 27 saves and a 1.96 ERA and Mr. T names me to the All-Star team. The game is played at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. I come into the ninth with a 3–1 lead, thanks to a two-run homer by the Indians’ Sandy Alomar, the hometown hero, and a solo blast from Edgar Martinez. I am very happy to have Edgar on my team. He hits me better than any man on earth. Just owns me, so much so that I feel like throwing a party for him when he retires (with an average of .312 against all pitchers and a .579 average against me).

I start the ninth by striking out Charles Johnson, then get Mark Grace to ground out and Moises Alou to line out, getting in and getting out, my favorite kind of save.

We fly home the next day on a plane the Yankees charter for us—Mr. T, his coaching staff, Paul O’Neill, Bernie, my father, Clara, and I—a whole bunch of people. It’s a propeller plane, and looks as if it might go back to Mr. T’s playing days. Oh, boy. Jet engines are bad enough. Now I have to look at blades that I imagine are powered by rubber bands?

Not good.

I keep hoping and praying that my fear of flying will pass, but it never does. Not on this flight or the hundreds that follow it. On all those countless Yankee charters to all corners of the United States, I sit in Row 29, in the middle seat, with my red leather Bible in my hand and Christian music in my earphones. My teammates? They are unmerciful. Mike Harkey, our bullpen coach in my last years,
is a prime offender, walking down the aisle and motioning for me to take off my headphones, as if he has important news to share.

Hey, Mo, I just spoke with the pilot, and he said it might be a rough flight, so you may want to buckle up a little tighter.

Clara is even more afraid of flying than I am. And here she is next to me on this vintage prop plane, the two of us almost as white as Casper. Twenty minutes out of Cleveland, the sky turns black and the plane starts rolling around like an amusement-park ride at thirty thousand feet, swooping up, plunging down, bouncing sideways. I am a mess. Clara and I are saying our prayers, clutching each other, asking the Lord to get us all safely on the ground.

We are flying into Westchester County Airport, just north of the city, and the only merciful thing about this trip is that it is short. As we make our descent, things finally calm down and I begin to feel better. We are almost down now. I close my eyes, just waiting and waiting to feel the ground beneath the wheels, so I can exhale once and for all. An instant later we hit with a hard thud, a tire blowing out, the plane careening, bouncing down the runway before coming to a stop.

Are you okay? I say to Clara.

She looks very pale, but she nods.

Thank you, Lord, for getting us here safely, Clara says.

I can barely unlock my fingers from the armrest. I feel as if we’ve circumnavigated the globe, not flown in from Cleveland. When we get inside the terminal, I find out that almost all the commercial airliners are grounded because of the weather. We are the only ones who flew.

The second half of the season is a whole lot better than that flight. We are one of the best teams in baseball after the break, going 48–29, and win eight of our last nine. We win 96 games, finish two games behind the Orioles, and earn a division series matchup
against… Cleveland. It opens at Yankee Stadium, and the traffic is still clogged on the Major Deegan by the time the Indians score five times in the first against David Cone, who can’t find the strike zone. A walk, a hit-by-pitch, a wild pitch, three singles, and Sandy Alomar Jr.’s three-run homer make for a big mess. But, just as in our championship run the year before, we never stop coming at you.

Ramiro Mendoza pitches three and a third superb innings in relief of Cone, and we start our charge. Tino Martinez homers, and we scratch out another run and then, after chasing Orel Hershiser in the fifth, Tim Raines, Derek, and O’Neill pound out consecutive home runs to put us up, 8–6, in the sixth. Jeff Nelson holds them into the eighth, then I get four outs, striking Matt Williams out looking to end it.

Tino, who had a monster regular season (44 home runs, 141 RBIs, .296), keeps it going in Game 2, drilling a two-run double in a three-run first. With Andy going, I figure it is going to hold up, but the Indians score five times with two outs in the fourth, and by the time Williams takes Andy deep for a two-run shot an inning later, the Indians are on their way to a 7–5 victory.

In these tight best-of-five series, the third game is always pivotal, and it couldn’t go any better as the series shifts to Cleveland, thanks to a grand slam from Paul O’Neill and a Maddux-like performance from David Wells. We cruise, 6–1, and, now just a victory away from the ALCS, we get a solid start from Dwight Gooden and take a 2–1 lead into the eighth. Mike Stanton strikes out David Justice looking, and then Mr. T gives the ball to me to get the last five outs. I get Matt Williams on a flyout. The next hitter is Alomar Jr.

I fall behind, 2–0. I don’t want to put the tying run at first, so there’s no way I am going to walk him. But I’m not giving in, either, by just throwing something down the middle to get a strike. Alomar
stands a long way from the plate, bent a bit at the waist, with a slightly closed stance. Joe Girardi sets up away. I am looking to hit the outside corner, low. I come set and fire a cutter. The ball is out over the plate, almost shoulder height. I miss my spot badly. The pitch is ball three.

I am surprised when Alomar swings.

I am shocked when he hits it into the first row in the right-field seats.

The game is tied and the place erupts. I put my head down for a moment and pick up the rosin bag. The Indians go on to win in the bottom of the ninth and then take Game 5 to end our reign as world champions much sooner than any of us expected.

Giving up that homer is the greatest failure of my young career. I know Joe and Mel are concerned about how I am going to handle it. Mark Wohlers is never the same pitcher after the Leyritz home run. Other relievers have responded similarly after giving up huge home runs. But almost the minute the ball sails over Paul O’Neill’s glove, I know that not only is this not going to break me, it is going to make me better.

I learn from that pitch. If you watch the replays closely, you can see I don’t finish correctly, and leave my release point too high. I’m not sure if I gave Sandy a hundred more pitches in the same spot that he would hit another one out, but the point is that I have to finish that pitch properly, have to be so focused, have to be so completely consistent with my mechanics that I do not miss my spot by so much.

The Lord has blessed me with an ability to pour all my energy into places where it can do me good. I have a strong mind, one that is not easily distracted or deterred or discouraged. I cannot bring Sandy Alomar’s ball back. I can’t change the outcome of the division series. But I do know that I hate the feeling that I have when I walk off the mound that night in Jacobs Field. And I am going to do all I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Y
OU NEVER KNOW WHEN
the peace of the Lord will make a difference in your life. I find this out early one Sunday morning in the off-season. Clara and I go to visit a house in Westchester County that we are interested in buying. It is a handsome home in a nice area. A friend of ours from church goes with us, just in case we begin negotiating and need an interpreter to go over fine points. It’s an 8:00 a.m. appointment, and it’s such an early hour that we don’t dress up for it; I am in sweatpants and a T-shirt, and Clara is dressed the same way.

We ring the doorbell and a woman opens the door. She looks aghast at the sight of us.

Good morning, we are here for our appointment, our friend says.

The woman looks us up and down. She doesn’t seem happy.

Okay, she says brusquely. Please take your shoes off. There is somebody else coming at 8:30, so you are going to have to look at the house quickly.

The look on her face, and her manner, suggest that she thinks we are drug dealers, or maybe gardeners who are playing a joke.

She gives us a ninety-second tour of the house. Two minutes, tops. I am not kidding. It lasts as long as it takes the Yankee Stadium ground crew to do their YMCA routine.

We do have other people coming, so thank you very much, she says.

We’d like to see the master bedroom and the closets, our friend says.

The woman seems incredulous now, and beyond annoyed. There is no way she wants gardeners in her master bedroom, peeking at her shoe collection.

She pulls our friend aside.

Can you explain to me what is going on? Who are these people, and why are they here?

Ma’am, our friend says, the man who is with me is Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees. The woman is his wife, Clara. They are serious buyers and are very interested in this home.

The woman now looks much more aghast than she did before.

Oh my God, I am so sorry. I had no idea. I am so very sorry. She goes and gets her husband, a local official. Suddenly, she wants us to sit down for pastries and coffee. She doesn’t care at all about the 8:30 appointment.

You will never guess who is here… it’s Mariano Rivera of the Yankees and his wife, she tells her husband.

I shake hands with the man. I thank him for showing us the house. We have a nice talk. I know exactly what just happened. I know that the homeowners basically profiled Clara and me not only as people who couldn’t possibly have the means to buy their home but who really were unfit to even be in it.

It is only the Lord’s grace that allows me to look beyond the incident, and to recognize that there is no malice or insult intended. A rush to judgment, surely, but no malice.

The Lord teaches us not to judge people by appearances, and not to close the door on anyone. We are all God’s children, after all. It should not make any difference whether I work with a baseball or a
machete, whether I am a fisherman’s son or a New York Yankee. I could’ve walked out of that house that day. I could’ve let the flash of anger I felt get the better of me. But I do not. I am far from perfect. So I forgive, just as the Lord forgives me.

And it all works out. Clara and I wind up buying the house.

I start 1998 with a blown save and a trip to the disabled list in my first appearance, thanks to a strained groin muscle. We lose four of our first five games and get outscored 35–15 in the process.

Not much more goes wrong the rest of the year.

We finish the first half with a record of 61–20. In the second half we slump and go 53–28. We hit .288 as a team, score the most runs in the league, and have the best ERA in the league (3.82)—almost a full run better than the league average. I wind up with 36 saves and a 1.91 ERA, and a total of 36 strikeouts—the lowest total for any full year of my career. This is quite by design. Mel Stottlemyre is concerned that striking out too many guys is running up my pitch count, and that it could contribute to my getting tired at the end of the year. In 1997, for example, when I basically strike out a batter an inning, I throw 1,212 pitches. A year later, with maybe even better results, I throw more than three hundred fewer pitches (910).

Would Sandy Alomar Jr. have hit that homer if my arm had been a little fresher? Would my cut fastball have had a little more bite on it? The Lord knows that, but you don’t and I don’t. Still, it makes complete sense.

Why not save the wear on your arm? Mel says.

Sounds good to me, I say.

With my cutter getting better and better, I am getting more broken bats, though not as many strikeouts as with the straight fastball. When I first came up, especially in 1996, I’d throw a fastball at the thighs, a fastball at the waist, and then a fastball at the
chest—going up the ladder, as they say—and guys would swing and miss and chase the high one. But hitters adjust. When they realize they can’t touch the 96- or 97-mile-per-hour fastball up in the zone, they lay off. So you find another way to beat them. And for me, that way is the hard, late movement of the cut fastball.

We wrap up the regular season with a record of 114–48, or 22 games ahead of the second-place Red Sox.

There are wacky numbers all over baseball that year, especially in the home run department. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have their celebrated chase for the home run record. They wind up with 70 and 66, respectively, and a slew of other guys aren’t that far behind. Ken Griffey Jr. hits 56. Greg Vaughn hits 50. Andres Galarraga hits 44 and barely makes the top five in the National League. I don’t think anything of it at the time, but then I am totally naive when it comes to steroids. I’m not saying that everybody among the home run leaders is dirty, though I’m sure a number of them are. I’m just saying that I could’ve stepped on a pack of syringes and not known what was going on. Not only have I never taken any steroids, I’ve never seen anybody else take them, either. Not once has anyone pulled me aside and said, Mo, you should try this because it helped me and it could help you.

I know there are people who may have huge doubts about this; my name has been whispered in this context because of my dramatic velocity increase in 1995. Believe me, I understand the cynicism, especially after so many star athletes, from Ben Johnson to Lance Armstrong to Mark McGwire, have turned out to be chemically enhanced—all of them after denying everything up and down. All I can tell you is the truth as it relates to me—I have never cheated, and never would cheat, because I love and respect the game too much for that.

Look at all the years of terrible publicity and disgrace these things have brought. When the issue gets all the way to the United
States Congress, and you have players bobbing and weaving or pretending they don’t speak English, well, that’s pretty bad.

If I could erase one thing from recent baseball history, it would be performance-enhancing drugs. I’d do whatever I could to make sure everybody played the right way—played honestly. I understand that there are players who are desperate to make it and feel as though getting some chemical help is the only thing that can get them there. I get that people want to fulfill their dreams, but do it the right way. If you have the ability to be a big league ballplayer, great. If you don’t have the ability, and you’ve done all you can to get the most out of yourself, don’t turn around and do something that hurts the game.

When it comes down to it, we all make choices. Steroids are there on the streets. They are there right now. You can go get them and have the stuff in your bloodstream before you finish this chapter, if that is your choice. Nobody is putting a gun to your head to do this. You know where it will take you. You will bulk up and get more bat speed and hit the ball harder, farther. If you are a pitcher, you are going to add some muscle to your fastball.

You also know that even if your choice never becomes public, it’s something you have with you forever, no matter how much you deny it, or how good your counsel is, or how brilliant your excuses are. And the strong odds are that somehow, some way, you are going to get caught. Maybe not this year, maybe not even next year, but eventually it’s going to happen.

And when it does, your name will be
barro
—mud. You will be on the front pages and the sports pages and get more time on
SportsCenter
than the anchormen. Reporters will follow you and ask for comments from your manager and teammates. People will rip you and your kids will be teased and humiliated, and it will be a
lio enorme
—a huge mess.

Knowing all this, if you still go ahead and take performance-
enhancing drugs, you know what I think? I think you have problems. I think you have big problems. I think you are in complete denial, or reckless, or so sure that you are untouchable because you are a rich, famous ballplayer that your troubles probably are just beginning.

Taking PEDs is cheating, plain and simple. It robs the game of integrity and legitimacy. If you get caught, you have to pay up. You should accept your punishment and shut up. You should be fully accountable and not hide behind your agent and some slick statement in which you offer some vague apology and don’t even say what you are apologizing for.

And if you are my teammate and you turn out to be a drug user? I am not going to coddle you or look the other way, I promise you. But I am also not going to abandon you. I will be there for you when you need it the most. I may believe you cheated and made a bad mistake, but I am not going to bail on you. If a brother or sister messes up, are you going to turn your back on them? I look at my teammates as family. So as much as I may abhor the behavior, I’m not going to rebuke them, as if I am some high moral authority. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:1–5, Jesus says:

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?

I look at it very simply: We are all human, and we all make mistakes. Some worse than others, some far harder to forgive. But who am I to judge?

When you spend 152 consecutive days in first place, it usually means there’s not a red-hot pennant race going on. But you still have to take care of business every single day. As I approach my thirtieth birthday, I understand more than ever that preparing properly is everything.

I am a person who likes order and finds comfort in routine. Never is this more true than on game days. After I shag flies and batting practice is done, I grab a little something to eat, usually chicken or pasta, though I can’t lie… every now and again we order in from Popeyes. (An amusing image, I know—a delivery kid showing up with fried chicken at the Yankee Stadium security gate saying, I have an order for Rivera…) Once nourished, I am in the hot tub before the first inning starts, usually around 6:50 p.m., if we are playing at night. I submerge myself up to the neck and get my body good and loose. After fifteen minutes or so, I towel off and go to a massage room, where I do some stretching and have the massage therapist work on my legs and anywhere there might be tightness, a process that takes about thirty minutes. Then I get dressed (very methodically) and go to the trainer’s room, typically at the start of the fourth inning, and Gene Monahan begins by stretching my arm and legs some more. Then, depending on how I feel, he might put steam heat on my shoulder and rub my arm down with some hot stuff. All the while, I am paying close attention to the game on TV. I am studying the opposing hitters’ at-bats, looking for tendencies or possible weaknesses.

This time with Geno is probably my favorite part of the day, outside of being on the mound. It’s measured, purposeful. It is unhurried. I am in touch with my body. I am in touch with Geno. We talk about our families and our days and what’s going on in the world. We are honest and connected. It brings closure to my preparation. By the time I leave his training table, I can almost feel my adrenaline starting to surge. I head for the bullpen in the middle or the end of the sixth, and I get ready to compete.

On a Sunday in early August at the Stadium, I stick to the routine religiously, throw a scoreless inning against the Royals for my thirtieth save, and lower my ERA to 1.25. It raises our record to
84–29, and by the time our nine-game winning streak is over, we are 89–29.

We get there by taking care of business, and being prepared.

With the way we’ve dominated all year, we’re obviously huge favorites to win it all, a status that can bring its own pressure. The Rangers are our first-round opponent, and their loaded lineup scores one run in three games. Juan Gonzalez, who almost beat us by himself two years earlier, hits .084. Will Clark and Rusty Greer both hit .091, and Pudge Rodriguez hits .100. John Wetteland, my former mentor, only gets in one game. I pitch in all three games, save two, and give up one hit, and now it’s on to a rematch with the Indians.

After we take the opener behind David Wells, the Indians win two straight, and now we’re looking at the biggest game of our season. A loss and we’re in a 3–1 hole, staring down an elimination game in Jacobs Field. Orlando Hernandez (El Duque), making his first postseason start, is brilliant, throwing three-hit ball over seven innings in a 4–0 victory to tie the series at two games apiece.

In Game 5, Wells is superb for the second time in the series, striking out eleven and pitching into the eighth. I come on with one out and a 5–3 lead, and the tying runs on board. So here I am again in an eighth inning at Jacobs Field, in Year 1 A.A. (After Alomar). At the plate is the Indians’ left fielder, switch-hitter Mark Whiten, who had been on our side in this series the year before. Hard Hittin’ is what Whiten likes to be called. He’s a guy with a lot of power. It’s the biggest at-bat of the game, if not the series. The count goes to 2–2, and all I’m focused on is finishing the pitch well, coming in hard on him with a cut fastball. From the set, I bring a hard cutter that does just what I want, busting him on the hands. Whiten hits a weak grounder to second that turns into a double play to end the threat.