ALCS NOTES
Sometimes, greatness just happens. One day in 1997 Mariano Rivera was fooling around with a new pitch, a cut fastball.
“It just happened,” Rivera explained yesterday. “I was throwing in batting practice and I saw the ball moving and I just grabbed it and started moving the ball and I said, ‘Hey, you know, this thing is good.’
“I always was playing around with the baseball to see what I can do, and I pay attention with that ball carefully and I started throwing it in the game. The rest is history.”
It sure is. Rivera has succeeded in his last 22 straight postseason save opportunities. He continues to be the one weapon no other team can match in post-season. Opposing teams can add hitters like Ichiro Susuki, they can even add ex-Yankees like reliever Jeff Nelson or pick up a starting pitcher, but no one in baseball has anything close to Mariano Rivera, who has saved both games of the ALCS for the Yankees against the Mariners.
Rivera pointed out yesterday that his amazing success could be attributed to the cut fastball and the devastating home run he allowed in the 1997 playoffs to Sandy Alomar Jr.
“I believe that things happen for a reason and always when bad things happen, something good will happen,” said the deeply religious Rivera. “I always try to find the positive way out of the negative and I did.”
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Joe Torre on the Yankees’ grueling coast-to-coast travel schedule: “You just assume that everyone is tired,” the manager said. “The only reason we know that we’re going west to east is because we don’t get meal money.”
Torre had no problem with Lou Piniella’s guarantee that the best-of-seven series would go back to Seattle.
“He’s trying to rally his troops,” Torre said. “There’s a lot of baseball left here.”
How did Mariner outfielder Mike Cameron get over the 3-2 loss Thursday night on the flight here?
“I had a nice little bottle of wine and a nice little nap.” Cameron said Piniella could make his Patrick Ewing-like guarantee to a veteran team like the Mariners, but: “Maybe three or four years ago I would have went into a panic.”
Noted Mark McLemore, “I love what he says. I think it’s great for us, great for everybody, great for our fans back home. It fired me up. Lou knows his ballclub.”
