by Hap Rocketto
The summer of 2013 was marked by a quartet of worthy athletic feats. The Boston Red Sox rebounded from a terrible 2012 season in spectacular fashion by going from worst to first in American League East. Oracle, the United States America’s Cup scandal tainted, billionaire funded, carpetbagger filled, entry, on the verge of elimination, won eight straight races to take the ”Auld Mug”-an achievement equal to the Sox 3-0 rebound in the 2004 American League Championship Series against the Yankees. The third was the well deserved triumphal victory lap of Yankee closer Mariano Rivera as he pitched his final season. The most important of all, was, of course, the United States’ victory in the 12th General John J. Pershing International Team Match.
The Red Sox claimed the division title in storybook fashion on a crisp New England Friday night within the friendly confines of Fenway Park, a place John Updike called, “a little lyrical bandbox of a ballpark. It is a precise and concise description of the century old red brick edifice on Yawkey Way which one would expect from a Massachusetts born Pulitzer Prize winner. But that was no surprise for, as another Bay State Pulitzer Prize winner, John Cheever, observed, “All literary men are Red Sox fans.”
As a Red Sox fan I respect the button down corporate New York Yankees, while finding those Yankee fans who view post season play as a birthright obnoxious. It is part of their fan base that I distain. I hold Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera in high regard. Both are certain to be first ballot Hall of Famers; Jeter is one of the all time great shortstops while the elegant Rivera is, without doubt, the best closer in the history of the game and a gentleman of the first water.
Rivera, the last active major league baseball player to wear the uniform number 42, was grandfathered the privilege when 42 was retired throughout baseball to honor the achievements of the remarkable Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson. I was born in Brooklyn and so the Dodgers were my team until two earth shattering events. They attempted to trade Jackie Robinson to the loathed cross town arch-rival Giants at the end of the 1956 season. Robinson retired rather than face that ignobility. A year later, the Dodgers decamped Brooklyn and moved to Los Angeles. I was ten years old and baseball had abandoned me.
After the perfidy of the westward move I followed the game in an absent minded sort of way, but had no team allegiance. In the late 1990s my shooting crony, rabid Red Sox rooter Shawn Carpenter, drew me back into the game. Soon I found myself at a cross roads. I had to choose a team and living in New England, straddling the Munson-Nixon Line, offered me three regional choices: the Mets, the Yankees, or the Red Sox.
Somehow I could not bring myself to root for the Mets even though they are Gotham’s spiritual descendant of the Dodgers and Giants-their colors are even Dodger Blue and Giant Orange and Black. But of course the Good Book speaks the truth when it says that the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the sons. Having betrayed me in my youth the Dodger progeny would not win back my trust as an adult.
In his essay There Are Fans-And Yankee Fans Gay Talese observes that, “Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees; Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees’ corner… The efficiently triumphant Yankee machine is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel?” I was left with but one choice: to have a soul or be a Yankee fan. I chose the former.
That being said, I admire the great Rivera who may fairly be considered to be the Lones Wigger of baseball. He exhibits many of the cardinal qualities needed to be both the great pitcher he is and, if he chose to be, a great rifle shot.
Rivera is superbly fit and athletic, two conditions that can’t be overlooked in both sports.
He has, essentially, just one pitch, the cut fastball or “cutter”, which has caused more broken bats than all the dugout temper tantrums in the history of baseball. He throws the pitch almost exclusively and his consistency is near perfect. The batters know exactly what he is going to throw but he does it with such regularity and repeatability, and so well, that it is nearly unhittable. Consistency is an essential trait for a rifleman.
Rivera’s reserved on field demeanor contrasts markedly with the volatile emotions and demonstrative behavior of many other relievers. In victory or defeat he looks the same. Rivera has said that, “When you start thinking, a lot of things will happen… If you don’t control your emotions, your emotions will control your acts, and that’s not good.” That is good advice for a shooter as few things are punished more harshly in a match than a loss of control.
Fellow pitcher, and team mate, Joba Chamberlain notes that Rivera, who has both won and lost some of baseball’s biggest games, is even tempered and is rarely exultant or depressed by either a pitch or a game’s result. In Rivera’s own words, “Win or lose, you have to forget about it. Right on the spot… the game that you’re going to play tomorrow is not going to be the same game that you just played.” The same applies to each shot in a match as well as match to match results.
As the 2013 outdoor rifle and baseball seasons come to an end so does the storied career of Mariano Rivera. Number 42 ends his career at the age of 43. It is poignant to see him leave the field knowing that if he was a rifle shooter he could look forward to at least another 30 to 40 productive and enjoyable years of competition.
