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Finally, I talked with Jonathan Papelbon, the closer who has become Rivera’s great rival. “I always watch closers,” Papelbon said, “what it takes for them to be successful. I try to pick up little nuances that you think might help you.” And with Rivera? “His focus. He may not stare in at the plate, but you can see that he’s in control, and I’ve tried to emulate that.” Papelbon acknowledged that he and Rivera occupy the opposite ends of the characterological spectrum of closers. “I’m the type of pitcher that uses energy and adrenaline to help me succeed,” he said. “He’s the type of pitcher that tries to control that.” Youkilis said of his teammate, “We just say Pap’s nuts.” No one on the Yankees would describe Rivera that way. It would be as difficult to imagine the serene and pious Rivera with the Red Sox as it would the amped-up Papelbon with the Yankees.

LIKE MANY OF THE YANKEES, Rivera lives in New York’s suburbs. He and Clara have three sons, ages 16, 13 and 7. I asked Rivera if they were athletic, and he seemed uninterested in the question. He would support them in whatever interested them. When I asked if he had any hobbies, Rivera said no — being with Clara and the boys was his hobby. Rivera seems almost not to have any personal attributes at all; virtue and duty and dignity take up the space that in others is occupied by appetite or vanity or cleverness or even ulterior motive. When I asked what achievements stood out in his own mind — not a tough question for most star athletes — he balked. “I don’t think like that,” he said. “I’m a different breed, I guess. Team wins; I’m proud for that.” Rivera threw a scare into Yankees fans some years back by saying that he felt called to the pulpit rather than to the mound. But God had other plans for him, and he returned to baseball. Rivera’s contract, which pays him $15 million a year, expires at the end of this year, but he seems likely to continue playing.

Rivera channels his philanthropic activities through a personal foundation, as many prominent ballplayers do. The Mariano Rivera Foundation, which distributes at least half a million dollars a year, helps underprivileged children through church-based institutions in both Panama and the U.S. Rivera is quite possibly the world’s most famous Panamanian, but he said that he makes a point of staying “under the radar” when he is there — which isn’t often, because during the off-season the boys are in school and he is loath to leave. When he does put away the mitt, Rivera says, he will devote himself to his philanthropic work.

Rivera takes his role as mentor very seriously, and seems to enjoy teaching as much as he enjoys playing. People who do what they do effortlessly are usually not very effective, or very patient, teachers. Rivera has patience to spare. The problem is following his instructions. Rivera will show absolutely anyone, including rivals, exactly how he throws the cutter. When I asked him why he was so unguarded, Rivera said, “It’s a blessing from the Lord: when he gives you something, it’s yours.” It took me a moment to realize that he wasn’t saying that he had an obligation to share the blessing, but rather that no one without the blessing was going to throw his cutter. God had doled out his favors parsimoniously.

Rivera’s chief students, of course, are his own teammates. He talks to them constantly about how to behave in various situations. Joba Chamberlain, Rivera’s bulldogish young setup man, and possibly his successor, told me that Rivera directed him to pay more attention to at-bats when they sat together in the bullpen. Jonathan Albaladejo, another relief pitcher, told me that he and Rivera talked often about mental toughness, about holding your emotions in check. Albaladejo spoke wistfully of his mentor’s inner calm. “I wish some day I could do that,” he said. The superpressurized atmosphere of Yankee Stadium had gotten to him, he admitted. Now, he said hopefully, “I’m a little more used to it.”

To talk to players of more middling achievement is to understand how extraordinary is Rivera’s consistency, his grace under pressure. Chad Gaudin, whom the Yankees acquired last year for the bottom part of the starting rotation, said that he had virtually apprenticed himself to the team’s closer-sage. He described a typical exchange:

“What do you do to throw that one pitch where you want it all the time when the situation is heavy — say, 3-1 count, bases loaded, big hitter up?”

“I don’t ever second-guess myself. I don’t say, ‘I can’ or ‘I should’ or ‘I must.’ I will throw the ball where I want to.”

Here was the distilled gnostic wisdom of the mound. Gaudin understood that he needed absolute commitment — to that pitch at that moment. Nothing else in his head. But of course when he got out on the mound, he found that there were all sorts of other things in his head — doubts, for example. “There have been numerous times that I’ve been out there and I think about the conversation we had when I’m pitching,” Gaudin said. “I think about it as a key for myself: What did we talk about? Now I’m going to do it. I tell myself, Just throw this pitch.” Gaudin tries to do through conscious effort what Rivera does naturally. Gaudin says that it has helped him. But not enough, apparently — he was released at the end of spring training. Though he was re-signed by the Yankees at the end of May, he has often not been able to throw the ball where he wants to. Albaladejo likewise has yet to translate Rivera’s lessons into a major-league career, but he has been an effective closer this season at Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Watching Rivera during the first three months this season, I was struck by the fact that while he doesn’t always hit his spots, the number of consequential mistakes he makes — mistakes in those “heavy” situations — is vanishingly small. Rivera didn’t allow a run over the first 11 innings he pitched, running his string to 51 straight converted save opportunities at home. He was, as always, boringly effective. Then on May 16, he came into a game against the Minnesota Twins in the eighth inning with the bases loaded and the Yankees leading 3-1. He walked Jim Thome, the aging slugger, to force in a run. And the next batter, Jason Kubel, turned on an inside cutter and hit a grand slam. I had never seen either of these things happen to Rivera. (It was, in fact, the fourth time in each case.) The pitch to Kubel was the same one with which Rivera has struck out left-handed sluggers like Boston’s David Ortiz time after time; it was the walk that was shocking. Afterward, Rivera berated himself for the walk, not the homer. That was his last serious mistake. At press time, the 40-year-old closer had converted every other save opportunity, posting an E.R.A. of 1.03 while surrendering a ridiculously low 11 hits and striking out 23 in 26 innings.

Rivera’s one breakthrough achievement of 2010 is his new role as glamorpuss: the men’s fashion designer Canali has featured him in an ad campaign. You can tell that the trim man in the blue pinstriped blazer (a coincidence, Canali says, not a reference to the Yankees’ fabled uniform) is a ballplayer, because he’s holding a baseball and has a mitt perched on his forearm. But with his Alfred E. Neuman ears and his shy grin, our model is plainly a very approachable superstar. It comes as no surprise to learn that Rivera actually patronized Canali before being asked to serve as model.

cont

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In an enterprise where arrested development is the norm, Rivera really does seem selfless. Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, who has known Rivera since the pitcher joined the franchise, says: “Success changes most players. It hasn’t changed him one bit.” During spring training, Cashman said, Rivera will sometimes change into street clothes, wander over to one of the outer fields, sit on the bench and talk to the minor leaguers. “It’s not asked, it’s not expected; stars don’t do that.” A good deal of the advice Rivera offers, especially to other Hispanic players, has nothing to do with throwing a baseball. Francisco Cervelli, who has been sharing the catching duties with Posada this season, said that Rivera talked to him about dealing with the press: “Don’t worry about what the people say; be yourself, say what you want to say with respect. They’ll respect you, and then they’re going to trust you.” Excellent advice — if you happen to be in possession of a soul at peace, rather than one divided against itself.

Nobody would say that the Yankees are Rivera’s team. After all, he appears in less than 5 percent of the team’s innings. Derek Jeter is the Yankees’ captain and the team’s iconic figure. He’s the franchise. But the Yankees’ identity is forged not by any one player but by the veterans who came up together in the mid-’90s — Rivera, Jeter, Posada and the pitcher Andy Pettitte. No other team in baseball has held on to its core of players as the Yankees have. Few have two such players, much less four. Commitment through thick and thin is not, in fact, graven on the Steinbrenner tablets: the Yankees made little attempt to re-sign Pettitte after the 2003 season, allowing him to leave for the Houston Astros before bringing him back in 2007. The Yankees have held on to their stars because they can afford to do so. Nevertheless, the four men have given the team a powerful collective identity: professional, undemonstrative, dignified and arguably a bit colorless. When I met with Cashman, he had just come from a team meeting with a “Delta Force special-ops guy” who discussed “how they go about their business.” That would be the Yankees: do the job right, and don’t leave a mess.

Even the most disciplined collective will have its outliers; and for the Yankees, that means Alex Rodriguez, superstar and perennial source of agita. A-Rod, unlike the old stalwarts, generates ink for all the right reasons and the wrong reasons — monstrous home runs, celebrity girlfriends, salary disputes, steroids. At times — like when he doesn’t deliver in the playoffs — A-Rod has seemed to be more trouble than he’s worth. This spring, with almost comic inevitability, the buff third baseman was ensnared in yet another scandal when he confirmed that he had seen a doctor suspected of blood doping.

Rodriguez said that he would be glad to talk about Rivera, whom he described as one of his closest friends on the team. He fiddled with his BlackBerry as we spoke, only looking up halfway through the conversation, when I asked if he had learned anything from Rivera. “You probably don’t have enough time for me to tell you how much I’ve learned,” he said.

“Try me,” I said. A-Rod gathered his thoughts. Rivera, he said, was “the greatest closer of all time” and “even a better human being and a great leader.” Rivera was a force in the locker room. “There’s been a number of times that he’s stood up and said something that was profound and important.” Could he recall any specific instances? No, A-Rod said; that would be private. Here, perhaps, was further proof that Rivera’s example was difficult to follow for people not constituted like himself.

THE YANKEES HELDtheir home opener this year on April 13. Fans exiting the subway to the team’s year-old limestone palace could see that over the winter its predecessor, the House That Ruth Built, had been unbuilt; great heaps of shattered masonry and twisted metal lay in the shadow of the right-field stands, which had not yet submitted to the wrecking ball. Before the game, the players were called out one by one to receive their 2009 World Series rings. When Rivera’s name was announced, the fans began to cheer, then rose to their feet and then let out a mighty roar of thanks. The only players to enjoy a comparable reception were the beloved Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui, last year’s World Series M.V.P., who had since been acquired by the Angels, the Yankees’ opponents that day.

The Yankees’ old guard shined that afternoon. Pettitte allowed no runs in six innings. Jeter homered. Posada hit two doubles. Only Rivera himself was left out, for the Yankees were leading 7-1 going into the top of the ninth. Girardi allowed Dave Robertson, a hard-throwing reliever, to mop up. But Robertson quickly got himself into trouble, falling behind hitters and then having to throw strikes. Perhaps he was having commitment issues. With the bases loaded, Bobby Abreu hit a grand slam. Suddenly it was 7-5, and Robertson was yanked. As the bullpen door swung open and the sound system cued up “Enter Sandman” and Rivera began jogging toward the mound, the fans went wild. It felt as if Robertson had accepted his role in the drama by pitching badly enough to give Rivera a chance to write his own inimitable conclusion to the afternoon.

Torii Hunter, one of the Angels’ best hitters, was up with one out. Rivera bent over deeply from the waist, in the almost prayerful gesture with which he begins his windup, and fired a cutter. And then another. And another. He fell behind Hunter, 3-1, and then threw two more cutters past him for a strikeout. Then fate provided the perfect coda for the day in the form of Matsui, the Japanese superstar who had played his entire American career with the Yankees and had come to seem the very incarnation of Yankee professionalism and class — a clutch performer of unshakable sang-froid. If Mariano Rivera were a position player, he would be Hideki Matsui. The fans roared again as Matsui came to the plate. Rivera fired his seventh cutter of the day, jamming the left-handed hitter. Matsui popped out weakly to second to end the game and provide Rivera the 529th save of his career.

After the game, reporters crowded Rivera’s locker, and he patiently answered questions in English and Spanish — standing up, not sitting in his folding chair, as many players do. Matsui, he said, was a great player, a great guy. The team was looking good. The whole day had been deeply moving. “It was,” he said, “special for me.”.....................THE END

On Steinbrenner’s 80th Birthday, a Chance to Reflect
By HARVEY ARATON
Published: July 4, 2010


On a lazy spring day in Tampa, in the fifth inning of a meaningless exhibition game, Andy Pettitte decided to check in with the Boss, the soon-to-be octogenarian and longtime contrarian.

On George Steinbrenner's birthday, the Yankees displayed the seven World Series trophies won under his ownership.On Steinbrenner’s 80th Birthday, a Chance to Reflect

George Steinbrenner was watching from his suite at the stadium that bears his name when Pettitte sat down and commented that he thought the Yankees, defending World Series champions, were looking quite good.

“We were losing, 1-0 or 2-0, and he said, ‘We need to score some runs,’ ” Pettitte said. “So I said, ‘Well, it’s early, we might score some runs.’ He said, ‘We’d better.’ To me, that summed it up right there. O.K., it’s him.”

For the moment, it was the old Steinbrenner bluster that in recent years has been reduced to select sound bites, then serviceable press releases and now may be glimpsed only via the rare close encounter with the franchise patriarch.

In the old days, Steinbrenner would surely have squirmed through a game like Sunday’s at Yankee Stadium, when there were three home runs allowed by the All-Star pitcher Phil Hughes, three Yankees runners thrown out at the plate and a blown save by Mariano Rivera.

Back when Steinbrenner was front and center, somebody would have gotten a good tongue-lashing before Marcus Thames’s 10th-inning, broken-bat single sent the Yankees off to Oakland with a 7-6 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.

But the Boss hardly ever comes around anymore, and all we know about how much he still watches his Yankees is based on the rare eyewitness account.

“Anytime you see anyone get older, it’s tough,” said Pettitte, a core, five-championship-ring Yankee, a player with access. “You see it with your own family, your grandparents and now your parents.”

Steinbrenner, perhaps the most demanding surrogate daddy baseball has ever known, turned 80 Sunday, in absentia except for the seven World Series trophies won under his ownership, laid out on a right-field concourse for fans to parade by in honor of the milestone.

Fans surged through the gates when the Stadium opened for business, snapping photos, slowing to read the inscriptions and contemplate the legacy of a man who was best known for carrying his demand of excellence to behavioral extremes.

“There was a mean, gruff and very good man all in one,” said Bob Schwartz of Middletown, N.Y., who was with his wife, Sybil. “But I’m old enough to remember the days when CBS owned the team. I appreciate all he’s done, I think his sons are carrying it on and I hope it remains a family business.”

So did Michael Rotker, originally of the Bronx, now of Washington, visiting the new stadium for the first time with his wife, Lori, and young sons Adam and Evan.

“I’m a third-generation fan,” he said, removing his Yankees cap, proud of the freebie he received in 1981 on Cap Day. “My father, he came here during the war in 1942 when they had a metal drive. He brought my grandmother’s pots and pans without her knowing it. The point was, when it came to the Yankees, you did whatever you had to do.”

This would seem to be the historical verdict on the Boss’s tactics, or antics, and his erstwhile reign of managerial terror: the championship trophies are the glittering justification, now and forever.

The stories will be passed to the next generation like homespun folk tales, the way Pettitte and the other holdover Yankees have regaled the likes of Joba Chamberlain.

“Yeah, those stories can go on for hours about George being George,” Chamberlain said.

Asked if he had any favorites, Chamberlain nodded and said, “Not that I can tell you.”

Chamberlain was almost wistful about never having played when the Boss roamed Stadium corridors and young players feared falling through the infamous trap door to the top farm team in Columbus, Ohio.

“I’d have loved every minute of it,” Chamberlain said. “We all need challenges in life, a kick in the rear.”

Knowing some of the old war stories and a bit about himself, Chamberlain added, “We’d probably have had some arguments, but he’d know I’m going to do it with love and I’d have known he’s going to do it with love.”

Pettitte, for one, could have told him how love wasn’t all you needed when it was your head Steinbrenner was calling for. He lived through enough tantrums and Boss-fueled trade rumors. “It was kind of edgy sometimes, stuff that would be said, or whatever,” Pettitte said. “It was just part of what happens here.”

Past tense, he meant. At least for public consumption, Yankee Stadium is a much tamer place with Hal Steinbrenner maintaining a low operating profile, allowing his father to bask in his twilight without constant reminders of the less distinguished part of his legacy.

Are the Yankees and their fans romanticists or revisionists? Perhaps they are both, having suffered and grown from Steinbrenner’s tough love.

“Nothing’s really changed here,” Jorge Posada said. “Before, you’d hear it from him. Now we hear it from ourselves. I think he put that on us.”

On Independence Day, the legacy of not tolerating failure continued as the Yankees finished their mathematical first half of the season with the best record in the majors. In the middle of the fifth inning, Steinbrenner’s 80th was noted on the big board in center field. The reaction was scattered applause more than a roar.

It was left to Posada to send a more heartfelt message.

“Happy birthday, Boss,” he said via a reporter. “We love you.”

Bob Sheppard, Voice of the Yankees, Dies at 99

Bill Kostroun/Associated Press
New York Yankees announcer Bob Sheppard acknowledged the cheers of fans at Yankee Stadium in New York in May 2000.

Bob Sheppard, whose elegant intonation as the public-address announcer at Yankee Stadium for more than half a century personified the image of Yankee grandeur, died Sunday at his home in Baldwin, on Long Island. He was 99.


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His death was confirmed by his son, Paul.

From the last days of DiMaggio through the primes of Mantle, Berra, Jackson and Jeter, Sheppard’s precise, resonant, even Olympian elocution — he was sometimes called the Voice of God — greeted Yankee fans with the words, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Yankee Stadium.”

“The Yankees and Bob Sheppard were a marriage made in heaven,” said his son Paul Sheppard, a 71-year-old financial adviser. “I know St. Peter will now recruit him. If you’re lucky enough to go to heaven, you’ll be greeted by a voice, saying, ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to heaven!’ ”

In an era of blaring stadium music, of public-address announcers styling themselves as entertainers and cheerleaders, Sheppard, a man with a passion for poetry and Shakespeare, shunned hyperbole.

“A public-address announcer should be clear, concise, correct,” he said. “He should not be colorful, cute or comic.”

Sheppard was also the public-address announcer for the football Giants from 1956 through 2005, first at Yankee Stadium and then at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands.

He signed a new two-year contract with the Yankees in March 2008 but was not at the stadium that season, when he was recovering from illness that brought a severe weight loss. His longtime backup, Jim Hall, replaced him.

Sheppard did not feel strong enough to attend the ceremonies marking the final game at the old Yankee Stadium on Sept. 21, 2008, but he announced the Yankee starting lineup that night in a tape recording. During the season, his recorded voice had introduced Derek Jeter at the plate, a touch the Yankee captain requested to honor Sheppard.

Sheppard was chairman of the speech department at John Adams High School in Queens and an adjunct professor of speech at St. John’s University while becoming a New York institution as a public-address announcer.

“I don’t change my pattern,” he once said. “I speak at Yankee Stadium the same way I do in a classroom, a saloon or reading the Gospel at Mass at St. Christopher’s.”

On May 7, 2000, Bob Sheppard Day at Yankee Stadium, the Yankee outfielder Paul O’Neill reflected on Sheppard’s aura.

“It’s the organ at church,” O’Neill told The Record of Hackensack, N.J. “Certain sounds and certain voices just belong in places. Obviously, his voice and Yankee Stadium have become one.”

Robert Leo Sheppard, who was born on Oct. 20, gained a passion for his calling while growing up in Queens.

“My father, Charles, and my mother, Eileen, each enjoyed poetry and music and public speaking,” Sheppard told Maury Allen in “Baseball: The Lives Behind the Seams.”

“They were very precise in how they spoke. They measured words, pronounced everything carefully and instilled a love of language in me by how they respected proper pronunciation.”

Sheppard played first base at St. John’s Prep and at St. John’s University, where he was also a quarterback.

While he was in high school, two Vincentian priests put him on the path toward a career in speech education.

“The combination there of one, the fiery orator, and the other, the semantic craftsman, probably presented a blending I wanted to imitate,” he once recalled.

Sheppard earned a bachelor’s degree in English and speech at St. John’s and a master’s degree in speech from Columbia before serving as a Navy officer during World War II.

He became a speech teacher at John Adams upon his return and served as the public-address announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees of the All-America Football Conference.

He was hired by the baseball Yankees in 1951, and soon fans were hearing Sheppard’s pronunciation of “Joe Di-Mah-ggio.”

“I take great pride in how the names are pronounced,” Sheppard said. He seldom entered the clubhouses, but made certain to check directly with a visiting player if he had any doubt on the correct way to pronounce his name.

“Mic-key Man-tle” was a favorite of his, but as Sheppard once told The Associated Press: “Anglo-Saxon names are not very euphonious. What can I do with Steve Sax? What can I do with Mickey Klutts?”

He enjoyed announcing the name of the Japanese pitcher Shigetoshi Hasegawa and the names of Latin players, particularly pitcher Salome Barojas and infielder Jose Valdivielso.

Sheppard feared he would trip over his pronunciation of Wayne Terwilliger, an infielder who played at Yankee Stadium with the Washington Senators and Kansas City Athletics in the 1950s. “I worried that I would say ‘Ter-wigg-ler’ but I never did,” he remembered.

But there was at least one flub.

When the football Giants played their first game at the Meadowlands, against the Dallas Cowboys in October 1976, Sheppard told the crowd: “Welcome to Yankee Stadium.”

On Bob Sheppard Day -- during his 50th year with the Yankees -- he was honored at a home-plate ceremony in which Walter Cronkite read the inscription on the plaque being unveiled for Monument Park behind the left-field fence. It stated in part that Sheppard “has announced the names of hundreds of players -- both unfamiliar and legendary -- with equal divine reverence.”

He leaves behind his second wife, Mary, two sons, Paul and Chris, and two daughters, Barbara and Mary. His first wife, Margaret, the mother of all four children, died in 1959. He also leaves four grandchildren.

Sheppard had his imitators, most notably the ESPN broadcaster Jon Miller.

“One day when my wife and I were down in St. Thomas, we went into a restaurant,” Sheppard told The Village Voice in 2002. “I told the waitress, ‘I’ll have the No. 1. Scrambled eggs, buttered toast and black coffee. No. 1.’ “My wife looked at me and said. ‘You sound like Jon Miller’s imitation.’ I wasn’t conscious of the fact that I was ordering the same way I’d introduce Billy Martin.”

Joseph Berger contributed reporting.

Steinbrenner Has Massive Heart attack --Steinbrenner hospitalized in Tampa
Reports: Steinbrenner hospitalized in Tampa
July 13, 2010 By NEWSDAY.COM STAFF

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack, according to multiple reports.

Bay News 9 said Steinbrenner was hospitalized at St. Joseph's Hospital, citing sources.

Multiple Tampa news outlets reported that emergency crews responded to his home.

Steinbrenner, who bought the Yankees in 1973, turned 80 on July 4 and told the Associated Press..

George Steinbrenner Dies From Massive Heart attack - RIP

George Steinbrenner, 80, has died from heart attack

The New York Yankees have confirmed that owner George Steinbrenner is dead, at the age of 80.

The New York Daily News, citing a Yankees team source, said Steinbrenner died at about 6:30 a.m. ET today in Florida after suffering a massive heart attack last night.

A family statement said: "It is with profound sadness that the family of George M. Steinbrenner III announces his passing. He passed away this morning in Tampa, Fla., at age 80."

WABC reported Steinbrenner suffered a massive heart attack last night and was rushed to St. Joseph's hospital in Tampa.

Steinbrenner last week told the AP he was "feeling good" after spending a couple hours in his office at the Yankees' spring training complex.

During Steinbrenner's ownership, the Yankees have won 11 pennants and seven World Series.

The Yankees website is acknowledging that there are reports about Steinbrenner suffering a heart attack, but makes no further comment, as of 9:55 a.m. ET.

When Steinbrenner celebrated his 80th birthday on July 4 at his home in Tampa, he said in a press release through his spokesman Howard J. Rubenstein:

"I want to thank everyone who has sent their good wishes. I am very fortunate to have the love and support of a great family and many, many friends. The Yankees and their fans are a large part of what keeps me going. It means a lot. And I remind everyone that the Fourth of July is also the birthday of our country. We are all lucky to be Americans."

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00761/TPY11-BASEBALL_2_761641gm-a.jpg

Friday is Old timers day at Yankee Stadium they play Tampa after the Oldtimers Game .....Dont Miss It cant wait to see what Reggie and Yogie etc have to say about George

RIP