Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera, in Taiwan for the start of the World Baseball Classic, played diplomat on the upcoming tournament while focusing on the importance of education during a press conference with local media Tuesday.
Rivera, a mainstay of the New York Yankees from 1995 to 2013, will throw out the ceremonial first pitch of the game in Taichung on Wednesday evening between his native Panama and Taiwan that will open play in the tournament’s Pool A.
He was diplomatic when asked Tuesday which team he would pull for.
“I’m going to give you the political answer. I came here to support baseball. Obviously, being Panamanian, I want Panama to win, but here in Taiwan I want Taiwan to win as well,” he said.
He did have a pretty good idea what each team’s closer will feel when trying to clinch wins for their WBC teams.
“There’s a lot of pressure when you close games. I used to have an afro, but as the years went by, I started losing my hair because of the pressure,” Rivera said with a laugh while acknowledging the intense pressure he faced.
The legendary reliever holds the MLB record with 652 saves during his 19 seasons with the Yankees, and he became the first player to be unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame in 2019.
Early in his Yankee career, in 1998, he founded the Mariano Rivera Foundation to provide children from impoverished families educational opportunities that empower them for the future.
When he was asked Tuesday about the foundation and his thoughts on the younger generation, Rivera spoke at length about the importance of education, including as an athlete.
“As a professional player, we have an enemy called ‘injuries.’ Anything can happen in any given moment to whoever, it can be the best player or the worst player, it doesn’t matter,” Rivera said.
“But with education you can get hurt, you can even lose a leg or arm, but you continue to learn and be able to produce or provide for your family that you are going to have,” he said, describing education as the “foundation of everything.”
Rivera even used the example of his son, who was drafted by the New York Yankees, but still had a year left before finishing college.
“He asked me ‘Dad, what do I do?’ I said, ‘what do you mean what do you do, you know the answer, you have to finish your education, you have to finish college and then you sign up for professional baseball,'” Rivera said.
He felt his son had to finish college before playing professional baseball, “because there’s no guarantees,” Rivera said of his son, who would get drafted by the Washington Nationals after finishing college.
The Yankee legend also recalled his time with Chien-ming Wang (???), a Taiwanese pitcher who was a household name in Taiwan as one of the Yankees’ top starters from 2005 until he hurt his foot running the bases in Houston in 2008.
Wang lasted with the Yankees through the 2009 season, but was never the same after his injury though he did make a memorable start for Taiwan against Japan in the 2013 WBC and will be the team’s pitching coach this year.
In recalling Wang, Rivera praised his former teammate and wondered what might have been.
“I want to tell you something about Chien-ming Wang. He was hungry, he was determined to make it to the big leagues….Chien-ming Wang was someone who we accepted, and he became one of the best pitchers for us in all those years,” Rivera said.
“Too bad that he was [injured]. That’s why we are not supposed to hit, because he got hurt running the bases. We don’t run bases, we don’t hit, we pitch, and that’s what happened with Chien-ming Wang. And after that he wasn’t the same.
“It was a shame, that something happened like that, because he was our best pitcher and together, we were doing a lot of damage,” Riveria said.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel