Ice

Enter Sandman
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Cy Young? Hell, Mariano Rivera has been the Yankee's MVP for the past 10 seasons.

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 $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.

[...]

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."

If it weren't for Rivera this season, the Yankees would not be in first place in the American League East -- now a full game up on Boston -- with 10 games left to play. Period.