All season long, Mariano Rivera has been presented with gifts cheers and absolutely no boos upon almost every visit to an opposing ball park.
Now when he came onto the field at Fenway on Sunday night the gifts were there, the boos were not but above all the cheers rained down in a fashion that seems fit for a king. It takes a spectacular baseball player to play as good as Mariano did for as long as he did on the team that he did to bring such a cheer but as it was, the cheers were there as the Boston faithful cheered not for the Yankees but for their closer.
The great Mo is a magician, a master at mowing down guys in the quickest of fashions. He is a genius, a hall of famer, and in the mind of Red Sox fans, not a the Yankee that he is on paper. Mariano is a good sport who never allows more than a meager fist pump even after completing the grandest of moments among his mighty career. He has snagged more saves than any other man in the history of baseball and holds a similar record regarding postseason saves. It is impossible to stress how great this insane career of Rivera has been but it is for that reason that Sox fans sit in a mixture of stunned awe and spectacular respect whenever this man takes to the mound at their beloved home field.
But with this being Rivera's last season of his career, and Sunday night being his last game against the Red Sox, it was time for this city of Boston to show their respect is ways more concrete than deafening cheers and a lack of the taunting and heckling that we gleefully shower upon Alex Rodriguez.
Amidst a short but sweet ceremony the Sox and their organization made you realize the full extent of how great Mo really is.
“Hopefully we don’t have to face Rivera -- that means it’s not a save opportunity for the Yankees,’’ John Farrell said prior to the ceremony. “But I think it’s deserved the tribute that’ll be paid to him here before the game, if you’re a fan of the game. Just a remarkable career and he has set the standard for all those that occupy the closer’s role.’’
During the ceremony, Red Sox among other gifts presented Mariano with a painting and the pitching rubber from the Fenway dugout that Rivera so calmly prepared in. They showered him in cheers, respected his greatness and helped John Farrel, John Henry and Tom Werner make a donation of an undisclosed amount to Rivera's Refuge of Hope charity that assists with providing for underprivileged families in his home in Panama.
There will never again be another guy like Mariano Rivera and while Red Sox fans can remember time and time again when they forgot about Mo and hoped for a 9th inning comeback only to be reminded that that would not happen as number 42 jogged out onto the field, when he jogs off the field tonight, we will inevitably ask a question. Why not one more year?
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