Enter Sandman

Thanks to Alex Belth for this one, New York magazine is running an excerpt of Buster Olney's new book, "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, The Team, and the Cost of Greatness," to be published in August.

The excerpt focuses on the Yankees' closer, Mariano Rivera, generally considered to be the best closer in MLB history, and certainly the best closer in post-season history. Many (myself included) consider Mo to be the reason for the Yankees' success in the Joe Torre years, winning five championships in nine years. Yes, Derek has been the X-factor, Bernie has been the constant, and the starting pitching has been the best in baseball. But when Metallica starts playing in the 8th or 9th, it means the Yankees have a small lead, Rivera's entering the game. And the game is, basically, over.

According to Olney, the reason for his success -- what sets him apart from even the other top closers in the game -- is that for him the game is pre-ordained. Win or lose, Rivera's response is the same. Unlike most closers who, when a hitter hits a homer or gives up a run, will angrily glare or march around the mound in frustration, Mariano's reaction never varies. He immediately shuts it out, focusing on the next batter or, really, focusing on the catcher's mitt.

Todd Helton led off for the Rockies. One of the most daunting hitters in either league, Helton is a left-handed first baseman with a lifetime batting average of .338 and 228 career home runs. With one more long ball, he could tie the game and disrupt the Yankees' first good run of momentum (eleven wins in fourteen games) this year.

Helton stepped into the batter's box, but Rivera didn't see him. "Sometimes I see only the catcher's glove," Rivera says. "Sometimes there is nothing else. But sometimes I see the hitter too."

When does he see the hitter? When the hitter is particularly dangerous, like Boston's Manny Ramirez? Or when the tying run is on base and he has to be a little more careful? "No, no, no, it's nothing like that," Rivera says.

"I see the hitter when he's moved in the box" -- Rivera lifts his hand, pointing at an imaginary batter in an imaginary batter's box -- "like when he's moved closer to the plate or changed his stance."

Meaning, he sees the hitter trying to adjust to his wicked cutter, which drives viciously in on left-handed hitters, or swerves away from helpless right-hand hitters. He then adjusts, but otherwise, the batter really is of no concern to him.

In fact, even when the batter has success against him it can buoy, rather than harm, Rivera's confidence. After he gave up a game winning home run to Sandy Alomar Jr. in the fourth game of the '97 ALCS -- a serious Cleveland went on to win -- reporters peppered him about how devastating that was to him, and how he must have thought about it throughout the long winter. He claimed he didn't think about it at all, but he was lying. He did think long and hard about it and concluded that it was confirmation of his own dominance.

Alomar was lucky, Rivera decided; if any other pitcher had been on the mound, then the manner in which Alomar hit the ball -- arms extended as he drove the ball to the opposite field -- would've resulted in a long fly ball, because no other closer threw a high fastball as hard as Rivera. The power in the home run had come from Rivera, the pitcher believed, and not from Alomar. Even in a moment that would have been a devastating failure for any other closer, Rivera believed he was in complete control.

And most of all he thinks both his gift and the outcome of the game are in God's hands. Before the 7th game of the 2001 World Series, he gave a rare pre-game talk to his teammates about God and fate. Later that night, Rivera would make a throwing error and give up two runs, the last on a blooper by Luis Gonzalez over the heads of a drawn-in infield, for the winning run.

The Yankees' victory parade in the city was canceled, and Enrique Wilson, the Yankees' utility infielder, changed his flight back to the Dominican Republic. The plane Wilson was initially scheduled for -- American Airlines Flight 587 -- crashed in Queens, killing all 260 passengers.

Wilson saw Rivera the next spring, and they talked about the twist of fate. If Rivera had closed out the Diamondbacks in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7, Wilson would have, in all likelihood, been on the plane that went down. For Rivera, this was further confirmation that he and his teammates were all subject to God's will. "I'm glad we lost the World Series," Rivera said, "because it means that I still have a friend."

Awfully hard to break a guy's confidence when he's got that kind of mojo going.

One of the great things about living in this area during the "Torre era" is that it often feels like we're watching baseball history in the making. It is a privilege to watch the center field fence open and Rivera start jogging towards the mound, Metallica blasting. And watching him work, seemingly effortlessly in the hottest nights of August or the most nerve-wracking nights of October (or November, in the case of the 2001 season), you know you're watching something you will not see again.