He came from a family where fishing was a way to make a living. And Mariano Rivera, like others before him, was destined for a fisherman’s hard life.
This was the dangerous work of his father, Mariano Rivera Palacios. It was also what uncle Miguel Rivera did. He died in a hospital after injuries at sea.
Miguel Rivera was lashed by ropes that broke loose from a hydraulic mechanism used to reel in fishing nets. This all happened in front of young Mariano, whose mouth and ribs were injured.
The death left a mark on Mariano Rivera. Better, he thought, to concentrate on baseball than the perils of a fisherman’s life.
“From that moment, I think he became fearful,” his father said. “From then on, he began to practice more and go to the stadium.”
He signed with the New York Yankees two years after his uncle died. He returned to fishing at times, but only when he needed money.
Alfredo Munoz, a childhood friend, remembers that Rivera’s dreams lay beyond the sea.
He recalls Rivera saying: “I want to be somebody. I want to be great.”
And he was true to his word. He became the greatest reliever in baseball history. He spent all of his 19 seasons with the Yankees, freezing batters at the plate for a generation. Now, at 43 years old and with the most saves in the game, the long ride ends with his retirement after this season.
Mariano Rivera was born on Nov. 29, 1969, the first son of Delia Jiron and Mariano Rivera Palacios. Around the Pacific fishing village, he is still known by the nickname “Pili.”
The town of 17,000 relies on fishing, with 90 percent of the population employed buying, selling or catching fish.
“Mariano was a baseball player when he was still in the womb,” his father said.
He also played basketball and soccer, but baseball won out.
His childhood friends remember how Mariano Rivera hated to lose. When his team was behind, he would throw the ball in the ocean and call it a tie.
In Puerto Caimito — 40km west of the capital, Panama City — Mariano Rivera and his friends played their baseball on the beach with tennis balls, or balls made from fishing nets. Bats were made of branches from trees in the mangrove swamps. Gloves were empty milk cartons.
That would change before long. He failed in a tryout as an infielder, but he signed as a pitcher with the Yankees for US$3,500. He was sent to the Dominican Republic to play, and quickly moved to Tampa, Florida. His debut in New York came in 1995.
“I rushed to sign as his dad,” his father said.
Baseball in Puerto Caimito did not begin with Mariano Rivera. In the 1960s, a pitcher named Manuel Jiron signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates, though he failed to make it to the majors. However, Mariano Rivera soared to unimagined heights.
Mariano Rivera’s father and mother have traveled often to see their son pitch. His father, once a captain on a sardine boat, likes to muse about his son’s journey.
“Sometimes when I’m in Yankee Stadium, I’m watching from the stands and I say to myself: ‘Look where Mariano has come from — from Puerto Caimito, a town full of mud and stinking fish meal plants, but this is what feeds us,” he said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier