Novo vocabulário:
- I’ve been very pleased
- for so long from afar
- In late January
- by vexing issues
- demanding owner
Texto:
Yankees’ Mariano Rivera Is the Last No. 42
She had long wanted to meet him, but when they finally shook hands this past winter it was Mariano Rivera who was captivated by the presence of Rachel Robinson. He wears the number. She lived the legacy.
“It was wonderful,” he said. “I was honored.”
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| Mariano-Rivera-42 |
Rivera is the last of a dozen players who were allowed to continue to wear number 42 — made famous by Rachel Robinson’s husband, Jackie — when Major League Baseball retired it in 1997. It happened to be the same year Rivera became the Yankees’ closer.
Two years earlier, when the clubhouse attendant first handed Rivera his jersey, he was a 25-year-old Panamanian rookie with no idea that the number on the back symbolized the breaking of baseball’s color line on April 15, 1947.
But he has saved a few games over the last 13 years, always with a persistent professionalism. He grew nicely into greatness.
“Being the only one carrying the number right now, and forever, this means a lot to me,” Rivera said when asked about Thursday’s 63rd anniversary of Robinson’s big-league debut.
Yankee fans might actually believe that Rivera, 40, will pitch in perpetuity, given his competitive agelessness. But someday, nobody knows just when, the magic will leave Rivera’s slender right shoulder and 42 — at Yankee Stadium, at least — will carry even greater historical significance, if that is possible.
Given her deep Dodger roots and a soft spot for the Mets, Rachel Robinson has never been one to get her baseball fix in what was once sworn enemy territory, the Bronx. At 87, she attended opening day last week at Citi Field. But her plan was to be at the Stadium on Thursday night with her daughter, Sharon, and her grandson, Jesse Simms, for what has become an annual celebration of her husband’s indelible mark on American history.
The No. 42 jerseys will again be worn in major league parks, but only Rivera’s will be seen again and again, or with every jog in from the bullpen until, well, sometime within the next decade.
“I’ve been very pleased (=satisfeito) that he is the last one to wear Jack’s number,” Rachel Robinson said in a recent telephone interview. “I had admired Mariano Rivera for so long from afar (=tanto tempo longe).”
In late (=final) January, they were brought together when Rivera, along with Hank Aaron, attended a fund-raising reception for the Jackie Robinson Foundation in Lower Manhattan. In a Q. and A. forum, Rivera talked about “the privilege and the pressure” of wearing 42. The privilege was for obvious reasons, he said. The pressure was “because of the way Jackie Robinson conducted himself to make the best for his people, and for all minorities.
“So I know I am always watched, under the microscope,” he said.
Rivera paused, not for effect but because he is a serious, contemplative man. He added: “It’s a challenge, you know?”
Rachel Robinson said Rivera had nothing to worry about; he had long since risen to the number’s principles and behavioral standards.
“I believe there is integrity attached to it,” she said. “And I would hope it would always represent individuals who stand up for the things they believe in. I know that the Latino population has suffered through many of the challenges we have as African-Americans, so to have someone who conducts himself in the way Mariano Rivera does, that’s what we want to teach our young people.”
Unequivocally, Rivera said he does not consider himself a groundbreaker because he did not come first, or anywhere close to it, as Jackie Robinson had. All Rivera does is pitch and do what he can, quietly, in his community.
“After the legacy that Clemente, Cepeda, Marichal and many others left for us, I don’t think anyone can say anything about Latino players,” he said. “If there was something there before, something people didn’t like, I think it’s already changed.”
He might be surprised outside the big-market bubble, in a country that is polarized by vexing (=inquietantes) issues, immigration among them, said Alan Swyer, the director of “Beisbol, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” a documentary on Latinos’ historical impact on the sport.
If early stereotypes — like the perro caliente, or hot dog — no longer resonate, new ones have arisen. “You have steroids, the idea that Latino players will take anything,” Swyer said. “You have the belief that they are front-runners or they aren’t team players — Manny being Manny. But Mariano is the flip side of Manny Ramirez. There is a dignity to him that is really important, especially as the U.S. becomes more Hispanic.”
On the game’s biggest stage, for baseball’s most credentialed team and most demanding (=exigente) owner, Rivera has looked in for the sign and right into the camera with a dispassion that borders on hypnotic.
“I think the key word is cool,” said Representative José E. Serrano, who represents the 16th District in the Bronx, describes himself as a Yankees fanatic and believes that Rivera has presented a very different kind of Latino face to American sports.
“I never thought there was anything wrong with playing with passion, but people didn’t understand the Latino culture,” Serrano said. “Mariano is so interesting because he just comes in, does the job, nothing flashy, like working people do every day.”
He has hardly been the only calm, collected Latino ballplayer, a lone Rivera, Serrano cautioned. He mentioned Bernie Williams, for one, but agreed that no one else had created such an aura facing forward while carrying the weight of No. 42 upon his back.
In January, Rivera told Rachel Robinson that he wore the number with great pride. “Every day,” he said.
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