NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — It was a simple county park, with no scoreboard and a chain-link fence demarcating the outfield perimeter, where children scrambled after foul balls and aluminum pings echoed toward an ice-cream vendor across the parking lot.
On the mound, however, a silhouette appeared strikingly familiar. Lean and compact, he made that sideways glance toward the catcher and that smooth bend of his knee and then threw a whir of a 96-mile-per-hour fastball. Then the fans cheered, “Let’s go, Mo!”
A man standing behind home plate said what everybody else seemed to have in mind already, when the bases were loaded and the pitcher, Mariano Rivera III, offered no hint of distress.