What a beautiful post. I’m sure Rivera would love to know that he had this centering effect on you. Please consider learning about qi gong, it will make you strong forever. Rivera is an avatar who happens to be a transcendently talented relief pitcher. Your soul senses this about him. God bless you (and the Yankees) and stay well.

About Rivera, I was very surprised by the Yankees offer. I would’ve thought they could’ve offered $45M (or maybe 48) for 4 years instead: It still would’ve been the highest annual average of any reliever, a raise from his last contract, and would’ve avoided all that messy “I want a 4th year” stuff. I do not think Rivera will be a dominant pitcher in 2011, but I bet he will pitch, and that negotiation could be messy.

“”I might have done the same thing. Who knows?” Rivera said.”

So Andy, by all accounts a stand up guy, used HGH. And Mo, another by all accounts stand up guy, might have been tempted.

Peter, silly question, is the competitive atmosphere in a locker room so intense that normally good guys would be tempted to stray into the dark side?

I always knew Hoffman was good, and always said he was one of the best closers ever, but, just look at the yankee press release about MO, a competitor of his, is mentioned 3 times in 5 paragraphs.

I still think Mo is better, but reading this actually gives me more respect for Hoffman then I had before (yea, I am biased towards MO, but look, he is the best closer of all time, better then Eck, or Smith, or Hoffman, or anyone else), its just that sometimes you really appreciate how good someone is, when you realize how good the next best guy is, and realize, holy crap, our guy is way better then we ever realized.

Think of it this way, look at Ted Williams, and how good he was, and everything about him, he is Hoffman, and realize now, we have the Babe Ruth of closers.

I saw Beam signed with Pirates and Rasner signed a fair minor league contract with the Yankees, any word on Matt Desalvo?

Both CC Sabathia and Chien Ming wang gave up more earned runs in one post season series than Mo has given up in his entire post season career! Holy Crap!

CC- 10.1 IP – 12 ER vs. Boston 2007.
CMW – 5.2 IP – 12 ER vs. Cleveland 2007
MO – 117.1IP, 10ER

Incredible. Keep on rockin’ it MO.

And to answer Dave about if Mo can stay our closer all 3 years I’d say no. One way to deal with that is if we go back into negotiations for Santana again and we already know Hughes would go (which I’m against) then maybe if we add Kennedy in the deal we can land Nathan as well as Santana. Nathan could be Mo’s super setup man and eventually they can switch rolls. Otherwise, we deal with it when it comes. But no I dont think he can last.