Mariano Rivera will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Over the next six months or so, as we approach the actual induction weekend, we’ll be flooded with tributes, memories and biographies of the greatest relief pitcher in the history of baseball. Before we get to all that, though, I wanted to take a couple hundred words and explain what Mo meant to me.
My childhood home is 483 miles from Yankee Stadium, across the longest international border on the planet. I didn’t get to a game in the Bronx until I was 12, and for most of my formative years, before part-time jobs earned me enough money for an MLB.