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" If there has ever been a man at his best, it&amp;#039;s Mariano Rivera, for years now. Though it seems, come a press conference this Saturday morning, he will officially be playing his last innings. There&amp;#039;s been talk \u2014 stretching back to his 2001 $40M contract \u2014 that he was over-the-hill, ready for the eternal ice bath of retirement. But he kept walking out to &amp;quot;Enter Sandman.&amp;quot; And winning. Rivera is the greatest closer in baseball&amp;#039;s history. Full stop. If you need, the numbers: Five World Series wins. Most saves ever, at 608; one blown for every fifteen kept. A career WHIP of .998. About a strikeout an inning. A 2.21 ERA \u2014 including his lowest and second-lowest averages at ages 35 and 38. All over 15 years. From a young man to an old one who could throw against anybody. But the numbers only tell part of how he affected each contest. Even just his presence \u2014 the potential that he will stand up, loosen, and walk onto the mound \u2014 could alter everything. As our own Charlie Pierce wrote, in 2001: The rest of the case--the best part, the dramatic soul of it--comes from the fact that Rivera&amp;#039;s presence changes every game long before he enters it. Consider: From July 8, 1999, until June 24, 2000, nearly a flat year, including the 1999 World Series, Rivera did not allow a single inherited runner to score. Not one. This means that teams must play the Yankees in accelerated time. They have to win in seven innings, or maybe in eight, and the pressure cracks many of them long before Rivera even begins to warm up. That thing that baseball&amp;#039;s tiresome aesthetes profess to love--that each game, theoretically, could last forever, that it is timeless (Five minutes, Mr. Costner!)--is demolished when a team decides to place a mental curfew on itself to win the game before the end of the game , before New York goes to its bullpen and brings out the Hammer of God. Hell, Rivera is just different from other closers. Again, Pierce: He does not walk the ragged edge that many closers do. He is not the fearsome, wild-eyed, intimidating presence the position once appeared to demand. His power seems almost illusory, given his demeanor. He pitches briskly and efficiently, relying on a delicately manipulated fastball that he either throws straight past the hitter or cuts so it sails in on the hands and dives away. In the fourth game of [the 2000] World Series, for example, facing Matt Franco of the Mets, Rivera threw a clutch of cut fastballs that danced like swallows and flummoxed Franco so completely that he looked wonderingly at the perfectly straight fastball that ultimately struck him out. It&amp;#039;s a rare occassion to watch someone who is truly the best decide to end his career. It&amp;#039;ll be hard to see Rivera exit the bullpen this season, knowing that each time will be closer to his last. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a20381/mariano-rivera-to-retire/>