What Matters

Mariano Rivera strolled easily out of Yankee Stadium wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers. He kept an arm around his son as he smiled and waved to the crowd at the players’ gate.

Moments before he answered questions about the loss to Baltimore.

“It hurts,” Rivera said. “Your team gives you an opportunity, they come back and you just have to be able to hold them and I wasn’t able to do that. It hurts a lot.”

Rivera is much too hard on himself.

“He’s the best,” said Raul from Tremont Avenue. “I want him in the game tomorrow because I know we will win.”

Roger Clemens once challenged a group of reporters. “Any of you can pick your two favorite superheroes and I’ll put Rivera up against both of them.”

Rivera sees it differently.

“I am just a simple worker,” he likes to say. “I’m nothing without my teammates.”

He felt like he let them down yesterday, but today will be different. Today is always different and no one knows that better than Rivera.

“You forget the past because there’s nothing you can do about it,” he always says. “The next game is all that matters.”