Enter Sandman

By Austin Amoroso

Let's take a trip down memory lane.

It's April 15. The Yankees just lost to Oakland on a Marco Scutaro walk-off three-run homerun that dropped the Yanks' record below .500 at 5-6.

The loss wasn't all that alarming, despite Scutaro's pension for keeping the ball in the park. It was just a loss, in April, one of many to come over the course of the season.

But what was alarming, at least to some, what had Yankees critics salivating and Yankees fans cringing, was that the homerun came off of the best closer in the game. At least the guy who used to be.

Wait. Used to be?

The Scutaro job was Rivera's first blow-up of the season, but his next time out, five days later, he gave up two runs on two-thirds of an inning against the Red Sox, in another loss, as his ERA soared to 8.44. It made it two blown saves and two losses in a row for him, just 15 games into the season, and it was surely an omen that this was the beginning of the end for the guy that you never expect to fail.

Rivera turned 37 last November, and the slender 6'2'', 185 lb. one-pitch wonder wasn't going to be able to extend his career, the critics said, the way Trevor Hoffman has, or Dennis Eckersley did.

But what those critics forgot was that this isn't just some other great closer doomed to succumb to the inevitabilities of aging.

No, this is Mariano Rivera, Mo-Ra, the single most dominant pitcher in the game and the most important piece to the success of the Yankees over the last 12 years. The guy with a record 34 postseason saves and a 0.80 playoff ERA.

And while it's his postseason performance that has separated him from his peers, Rivera has been just as consistently dominant in the regular season.

Since he became a reliever in 1996, Rivera has compiled 428 saves and a 2.07 ERA. Those numbers make him a hall of famer and one of the best. But what he does in the playoffs makes him the greatest of all time.

"I wanted to go inside," Rivera said after the A's loss. "It was in and over the plate."

It was more of the same from Rivera as he scrutinized exactly what went wrong; it was pretty much the same thing he's said after just about every blown game of his career. But for some reason this one was a clear sign, for the critics, that Mariano had lost his muster.

So now, three months later, where are those critics?

Since the Scutaro blow-up, and the debacle five days later against Boston, Rivera hasn't blown a save all season. He's converted 15 straight while posting a 2.36 ERA, numbers you're used to, and expect, to see him put up.

Wednesday night's game was just that, exactly what you expect, as Joe Torre, who has been insistent all season on only using Rivera for one inning, brought him in with two on and one out in the eighth to save a struggling bullpen.

Ground out, strikeout, fly out, fly out, ground out. Game over. Yankees win.

Torre doesn't have the luxury of holding Rivera back for just one inning, not now, when every game counts for the Yankees. That win made it five in a row and 11 of 14 overall for the team, cutting the A.L. East deficit to seven games and the Wild Card to six.

With more than two months still left in the season, there's more than enough time to get back into it. And with 'ol reliable #42 in the back of the pen, anything can happen, and it's sure to be a memorable finish to the season.