The third question about the Cy Young award was floated to Mariano Rivera, and he decided it was time to talk about the broomsticks. To explain his polite indifference to winning the personal pitching award, Rivera had to discuss what role broomsticks played in his life and his career.
While Rivera was growing up in Puerto Caimito, Panama, he did not have any baseball equipment. Rivera said he used cardboard for a glove and ragged clothes wrapped in tape as a ball. But finding a decent bat was difficult. Sometimes, he and his friends hacked off tree branches and used those to hit.
For Rivera, securing a broomstick was the equivalent of a teenager today getting a shiny aluminum bat. If Rivera had a broomstick, he could play baseball for hours with something that would usually not splinter.
"That was trouble for us," he said. "We had to get somebody's broom. Somebody's home would have to suffer for us to play. Some kid that was playing would have to go take the broom from his house. That's trouble."
More than 20 years and US$53 million in contracts later, Rivera, 35, still respects the importance a broom has in the homes of the fishing village where he was raised. Rivera said his upbringing taught him to be humble, so he tries to deflect questions about the possibility of his winning the Cy Young.
When Rivera, the Yankees' closer, was asked about the award Wednesday, he lowered his head and playfully pleaded for a different question. He realizes he is a serious contender for baseball's top pitching prize, but he was more passionate about discussing broomsticks than his prospects of winning a Cy Young.
"That's not me," Rivera said. "It's not that I hate talking about it, but I don't like to talk about myself. With all due respect, I don't. If you ask me, `Yeah, I would love to win the Cy Young.'"
Rivera, who is considered the best modern-day closer, could finally win it. He is having another superb season and, for an award that often goes to starting pitchers, there is not a starter in the American League this season with staggering statistics.
The other leading contenders are Bartolo Colon of the Los Angeles Angels, Cliff Lee of the Cleveland Indians, Jon Garland of the Chicago White Sox and Johan Santana of the Minnesota Twins. Rivera said there had been few "starters having the kind of years that have won it before."
Some voters believe Colon is the front-runner because he is 20-7 with a 3.34 earned run average in 212 2/3 innings, including a 9-2 record since the All-Star Game break. Lee is 18-4 with a 3.90 ERA, Garland is 17-10 with a 3.51 ERA and Santana, who won the award last season, is 14-7 with a 3.05 ERA. In the last 21 years, only two pitchers with ERA's higher than 3.34 have won the award.
Rivera, who is 7-4 with 41 saves in 45 chances and a 1.32 ERA in 75 innings, botched his first two save chances against the Boston Red Sox this year. After those hiccups, there were questions about whether the dominant Rivera had turned into a mortal closer. He responded with a career-best 31 straight saves. He had a rare rest Thursday night as the Yankee stopped the Baltimore Orioles, 7-6.
"I think he's got a good chance only because he's really been clutch and there's not anyone else, except probably Colon," said Dennis Eckersley, who won the Most Valuable Player award and Cy Young for the Oakland Athletics in 1992.
Only nine relievers have won the Cy Young, with Eric Gagne the last to do it when he saved 55 consecutive games for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2003. Before Gagne, it was Eckersley.
For a closer to win the award these days, he usually has to be almost perfect and it has to be a lean year for starters. Rollie Fingers, who won the Most Valuable Player award and the Cy Young with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1981, said that modern-day closers simply did not pitch enough to win those awards. Fingers tossed 78 innings in 1981, a strike year in which 38 percent of the schedule was lost.
"Sportswriters aren't stupid," Fingers said. "It's tough to give a guy who pitched 50 innings a Cy Young."
Jorge Posada, the Yankees' catcher, dismissed that argument. "You go for the best pitcher," he said. "He's been the best pitcher."
Eckersley agreed with Posada. "There was more pressure on him than anybody," Eckersley said. "Every game he pitched, they needed. The guy is ice."
During Rivera's 11-year career, he has finished a distant third in the voting for the award three times. He has received only one first-place vote, in 1996.
When Rivera was asked if there was a season when he felt overlooked, he paused. Finally, he chose 1996, when he went 8-3 with a 2.09 ERA and five saves as a bridge to John Wetteland.
"Look at the season I had in '96," Rivera said. "But I won because we won the World Series. That's how it finished. I didn't think about it again."
Rivera says he is not thinking about the Cy Young while the Yankees try to snatch the American League East title. As always, he gives the Yankees an edge.
When the Yankees inched into first place Wednesday, Rivera saved their game against the Orioles, while Mike Timlin blew a save chance for the Red Sox.
Whether or not Rivera wins the award, he emphasized that he would always be humble. He said he would remember what it was like to play baseball with cardboard for a glove, wrapped-up clothes for a ball and a broomstick for a bat. He sees himself as that boy in Panama first and, maybe, a Cy Young winner next.
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