The Sandman

Mariano Rivera

His journey started in a Panamanian village where his father was a fishing boat captain and he was a mate. When he was forced to abandon a sinking boat he decided there were better ways to make a living.

As a child he played baseball using a flattened milk carton for a glove, a tree branch for a bat and a ball made of shredded fish netting and electrical tape. Despite these crude beginnings he found he was good at the game. Leaving fishing, he tried out for the Panama Oeste team as a shortstop. His break came when he volunteered to pitch and was spotted by a scout for the New York Yankees.

In the minor leagues he damaged nerves in his elbow and had surgery, but rehabbed it and then produced two stellar years. He was promoted to the “Show” and soon became the Yankees main relief pitcher.

Now they call him “Mo,” “The Hammer of God,” “The Great One,” “Super Mariano,”and “The Sandman,” the last because he turns out the lights on opponents. When he leaves the bullpen to enter a game, the Yankee Stadium PA system blares out Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

Mariano Rivera broke the all-time major league career record for saves last month. It’s an extraordinary story where hard work, dedication and character won out. It’s also remarkable that Rivera’s Christian faith – not baseball or money – is the touchstone of his life. He scared fans a few years ago when he said he was being called to preach, not pitch, and considered giving up baseball.

He stayed with pitching and uses his status and money to practice his Christian beliefs.

The Mariano Rivera Foundation uses church-based programs to help underprivileged children in Panama and the U.S. On a personal level, he sometimes changes into street clothes and helps minor leaguers, something stars don’t do. According to James Traub, writing in The New York Times Magazine, Mariano has a ”soul at peace,” and a calmness that mystifies his peers.

Rivera had a born again experience in his early twenties and told The Times sportswriter Jack Curry: “When God takes control of everything, He’s inside of you and He brings you strength. He has the power to do everything for you. I feel like God is on my side and will help me deal with everything.”

Mariano says his signature cut fastball “simply appeared one day in 1997, like a divine visitation."  The pitch “jams a left handed hitter and rides away from a righty,” but it can’t be seen until the last moment. Other pitchers throw cutters, but nobody else’s break 6 to 8 inches like his.

He says the pitch is “a blessing from the Lord” and openly shares his technique. But he also believes “no one without the blessing was going to throw his cutter.”

Mariano Rivera walks the walk: he’s modest, sharing, loving, approachable, even-keeled, giving and faithful to his family and God. An exemplary Christian. And probably the best relief pitcher in history.

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Apocalypse Now?



A Harold Camping Follower

 They waited. Some left their jobs and traveled many miles. Others gave away their possessions and money, knowing they wouldn’t be needed. All were confident that when the clock struck 6:00 PM on May 21, 2011 the earth would be savaged by natural disasters, they would be swept into heaven, those left behind would be killed in a series of scourges and the earth would be destroyed in a ball of fire.

Like most people I was busy and missed the action. It didn’t occur to me until later that the fateful event hadn't occured and that radio broadcaster Harold Camping’s prediction was wrong – for the second time in 17 years. Guys who do this are usually given two chances, with the second prediction explaining the flaws in the first one. Amazingly, they often sell books successfully the second time around.

Camping is going for a record of sorts by issuing a third apocalyptic prediction: now it’s coming this October 21. Apparently all the bugs are out of his prediction model and this time it’s definitely going to happen. If you have any money left, send it in.

People are drawn to apocalyptic messages. William Miller produced a famous one when he calculated the Second Coming would happen no later than March 21, 1844. When it didn’t occur he reset it to October 22, which also passed uneventfully. This was called “The Great Disappointment” and Miller withdrew from the leadership of his church.

Many followers left the movement, but those who remained believed a misunderstanding had occurred and that Jesus had returned to heaven and not earth. The group remains intact as the Seventh-Day Adventists and they no longer predict the time of Jesus’s return.

The phenomenon isn’t limited to Christians. The new-age group “Heaven’s Gate” believed the planet was about to be “recycled” and the only way to survive was to free their souls to ascend to a spaceship that followed Comet Hale-Bopp. In 1997 thirty-nine of them “survived” by consuming arsenic and cyanide. There’s been no word back from the spaceship.

We’re now told the ancient Mayan calendar expires on December 21, 2012 and this signals the end of the world. It’s spawned books, television shows, a movie and attention that dwarfs Christian predictions. The hype has overpowered the assessment of archeologists who say the date is a milestone, like the millennium that started on 1/1/2000, and that the Mayans actually computed dates 72 octillion years into the future. Even so, some people will fasten their seatbelts late in the day on December 20 and then rush out to buy the explanatory books a few weeks later.

You’d think people would have figured out that nobody can predict the end of the world, if only because so many have tried and failed. Christians, especially, should understand the date can’t be known because the Bible tells us so.

That’s why the vast majority of Christians saved their money, kept their possessions and enjoyed the day the Lord had made on May 21, 2011.  Unless Mr. Camping gets really, really lucky and his new date coincidentally turns out to be the day God chose, we'll be able to enjoy October 21st as well.