A Cutter Above

When Mariano Rivera was growing up in Panama, his family was too poor to buy real baseballs for him, but that didn’t prevent the youngster from developing the kind of arm strength that would make him one of baseball’s most devastating closers.

“I used to throw rocks, shells, anything I could find,” said Rivera, the unflappable New York Yankee reliever who hasn’t given up a run in three months. “Sometimes we’d go to farms and throw coconuts, things like that.”

Rivera probably couldn’t heave a coconut 96 mph and make it cut eight inches to the left as a kid, but if those experiences contributed in any way to his becoming the pitcher he is today, then coconut-tossing should be included in every youth baseball training manual.

Simply put, Rivera is baseball’s most dominant and dependable reliever, a wiry 6-foot-2, 170-pound right-hander with a smooth-as-jazz delivery, a fastball with some serious hip-hop, and a temperament of heavy mettle.

Not only has Rivera not given up a run since July 21, a span of 38 1/3 innings, he has given up only two earned runs in his 42 2/3 postseason innings for an earned-run average of 0.42, the lowest of any pitcher in major league history with at least 30 innings.

“What’s in the water down there in Panama?” Yankee pitcher David Cone asked Rivera the other day, alluding to the ability of Rivera and fellow Panamanian and Yankee reliever Ramiro Mendoza to perform under pressure. “You guys are so cool.”

The cooler the October weather, the better Rivera gets. After saving three of the Yankees’ four victories in their World Series sweep of the San Diego Padres in 1998, Rivera is having another superb postseason, one that has helped the Yankees reach the World Series against the Atlanta Braves.

He pitched two scoreless innings in New York’s 4-3, 10-inning win over Boston in Game 1 of the American League championship series. He struck out Damon Buford with a rising fastball with runners on first and third in the ninth to preserve a 3-2 Yankee victory in Game 2.

Rivera got another save in Game 4, holding a one-run lead by getting John Valentin to ground into a double play to end the eighth before the Yankees exploded for six runs in the ninth inning of a 9-2 victory. In 12 2/3 innings over his nine championship series appearances, Rivera hasn’t given up a run.

“That’s a gift from God,” Rivera, 29, said of his playoff composure. “Even I get surprised sometimes. When I came in at Texas [in the division series], people looked at me like a ghost. They were so mad at me, calling me names. It was fun. It’s a challenge. It doesn’t bother me.”

What would bother Rivera?

“Giving up a run,” he said. “I still remember what it feels like. You never forget.”

It’s not a feeling Rivera experiences often, not with the repertoire he can unleash on batters.

“No one has a cut fastball like him,” Red Sox first baseman Mike Stanley said. “You sit there in amazement. You’re thinking it’s a slider, then you see it hit 96-97 mph on the screen and you’re like, ‘Geez, no wonder this guy is so good.’

“He’s so smooth with his motion, you try to recognize the pitch out of his hand, and by the time you figure out what it might be, it’s by you. Sometimes the ball will look good out of his hand, then it rises up. Sometimes it will look like a pitch on the outer half of the plate, then it cuts out of the zone. You have no chance. Your only hope is to foul it off.”

Stanley used to catch Rivera when he was with the Yankees in 1995, Rivera’s first year in the big leagues. In issuing signs for the young pitcher, “I used only one finger,” Stanley said, meaning all Rivera threw was a fastball.

But Rivera’s fastball always had natural movement and enough velocity for him to go 8-3 with a 2.09 ERA in 61 games as closer John Wetteland’s setup man in 1996, a year the Yankees won the World Series.

Then in 1997, after Rivera had assumed the closing role, he was playing catch one day, “and it happened,” he said.

“It” was Rivera’s discovery of a cut fastball, a pitch that bears in against left-handers and away from right-handers. With help from pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, he refined the pitch, and now it may be the best in the game.

“The ball used to cut by itself,” Rivera said. “Now, I try to make it cut. I use a certain grip, move my fingers and let it go. It’s a great pitch, that’s all I can tell you.”

Rivera went 6-4 with a 1.88 ERA and 43 saves in 1997, 3-0 with a 1.91 ERA and 36 saves in 1998, and 4-3 with a 1.83 ERA and 45 saves in 1999. His strikeout totals fell from 68 in 1997 to 36 in ‘98, then moved to 52 in ‘99, but he’s every bit as effective.

“He discovered the movement on his fastball, and instead of just rearing back, throwing the four-seamer and thinking strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, he doesn’t really care if he strikes people out,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said. “He’s getting Strike 1, and sometimes there is a hit and sometimes it’s an out. From that point, he just got better and better.”

Another impressive Rivera statistic: Left-handers hit only .143 with one home run against him this season, a direct result of his cutter.

“I’ve never seen someone so effective against left-handers, even when they know what’s coming,” Cone said. “The combination of his velocity, his movement and his deception with such a smooth delivery is impressive. Every appearance he breaks at least one bat. We keep a tally on the bench.”

Along with mastering a new pitch, Rivera has adjusted to the closing mentality, but not without some growing pains, the most severe of which he endured in Game 4 of the 1997 division series against Cleveland.

With the Yankees four outs away from winning the series, Sandy Alomar homered off Rivera in the bottom of the eighth to tie the score, and the Indians scored in the bottom of the ninth for a 3-2 win. It was the Yankees’ only postseason blown save in the last four years, and Cleveland went on to win Game 5 and the series.

“He was a setup man, a two-inning man, in 1996, but it’s a little different when you’re the closer and there’s nobody behind you,” Torre said. “Somebody cuts that safety net out from under you, and you realize that when the ball gets by you, the game is over. That took him time to get used to.

“We kept handing him the ball saying, ‘I don’t care how bad it is, you’re going to still do this thing,’ because you knew he had the guts. You watched him pitch the year before, and then the home run Alomar hit. . . .

“It’s a long winter when you have to think about that. But he came back the next spring, we talked about the home run, and we made sure it didn’t keep him from being the aggressive guy that made him really good.”

When he first became a closer, he “didn’t know how to get ready,” Rivera admitted. “Now I have a routine. I watch the game, after the seventh inning I start stretching, throw a weighted ball, get loose, and wait for the call.”

Then Rivera takes his cutter to the mound, and that means only one thing: closing time.

Rivera in ’99

How Mariano Rivera ranked in key categories compared to other closers this season:

* ERA: 1.83 (second, behind Billy Wagner)

* Saves: 45 (first)

* Save percentage: .918 (third, behind Wagner, Hoffman)

* Batting average against with runners on base: .198 (fifth, behind Wagner, Matt Mantei, Danny Graves, Trevor Hoffman)

* Batting average against, first batter faced: .048 (three for 62, first)

*

--Research by Houston Mitchell

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CLOSING TIME

Month-By Month

A closer look at New York Yankee releiver Mariano Rivera’s numbers: