Mariano!

I woke up this morning to the news about Mariano Rivera's injury. I watched the video and found myself getting choked up. What must he have been thinking as they drove him out of there? What were Girardi and the rest of the team thinking? This can't be the end, can it?

Regardless, here's a player who doesn't owe the Yankees another pitch. Since his first game, he has embodied the very best of what it means to be a Yankee. He really was (is?) one of a kind.

Tom Verducci says it quite well: "If indeed Rivera's success is, as he believes, derived from an act of God -- the cutter, he has said, is a blessing bestowed upon him one day in 1997 -- than he will accept this injury, too, as God's will. To see him in that cart that took him off the field was to see a man not broken but at peace. The look of willful acceptance was similar to the one minutes after he blew Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, when he stood at his locker and answered the same questions over and over with patience and grace. Whether he pitches again or not, he will always be the great Rivera, and nothing less."