I HATE the Yankees (slowguy is gonna make hay with that one).
But you gotta love Rivera. His family is in Panama for a funeral and he managed to show up HUGE for the damned Yankees last night, composing himself enough to deliver his “A” game in what has to be a tough time for him personally.
That’s HUGE. THAT is what makes a man stand tall.
I also dislike the Yankees. However, I must add that he went to Panama, attended the funeral and arrived back midway through the game last night.
I am a die hard Yankee fan, but I have to disagree with you on this.
A man would have stayed in Panama with his family, not hopped a private jet back to the US to play the game. Family should be more important than baseball, even if it costs his team a trip to the World Series.
Rivera has been a man his whole career. He’s just one of those guys that “gets it”. I’m also a Yankee hater … but liking something and respecting the hell out of something are two different things.
Rivera attended the funeral of one of his wife’s cousins. There was a baseball player (can’t remember the name right this second, I think for the Dodgers) who was playing in the playoffs the other day, 2 days after his father died.
Many Houston Astros were good friends of Ken Caminiti, and they clinched the playoffs on the same day of the morning Caminiti died.
Despite being a diehard Red Sox fan I respect the way Rivera plays the game…but I did not gain or lose respect for Rivera last night. If he had stayed in Panama because his family needs him there I would have probably gained respect for him. What he did last night was impressive but was it commendable? Only Mariano Rivera and his family know.
What about the fact that he attended the funeral and that his baseball probably supports a significant number of his extended family and is something he truly loves to do?
If my cousin died and I had a race that weekend I would make the funeral and still do the race. My family would expect that of me. The death of another is painful enough without it costing the living the remaining quality of their lives as well.
A man would have stayed in Panama with his family, not hopped a private jet back to the US to play the game
A man would do what the deceased would have wanted him to do. When I die, I don’t want my family to go on crying about it, I want my family to go make the most of their own lives … in honor of me.
One could speculate on the obligation he has to comfort his wife. We don’t know what his wife told him. She may have told him to go and that she was fine with the rest of her family around. It seems unlikely that mariano would have left had his wife said “I need you to stay”, he’s never come across as that type of guy. Mariano grew up in an environment that is very foreign to us. He’s not a “gotta get mine” type athlete. He’s also part of a culture that has different views toward family that what many of us are acclimated to (that doesn’t guarantee that every individual is, I admit that).
I tend to agree with Yarf. I bet you, his family would have wanted him to go back and get back into the action against the Red Sox.
I remeber in 1991, when my sister had brain surgery for an aneurysm, my dad was adamant that everyone try to keep as normal a pace of life as possible. That meant going to work, doing workouts, showing up to teach, or whatever family members did day to day. Fortunately, my sister came out the right way, but she could have gone either way like any of the other patients getting their skull cracked open to fix those nasty things.