Mariano Rivera wasn't going to end his Yankees career with a torn ACL

Mariano Rivera of the Yankees is interviewed outside of team's clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium May 4, 2012, in Kansas City, Mo. Credit: GETTY IMAGES/Ed Zurga
Exactly eight years ago last Sunday, the career of baseball’s hands-down greatest closer appeared to have come to a shocking end.
Mariano Rivera, who throughout spring training 2012 consistently hinted that the upcoming season would be his last, suffered a fluke injury during Yankees batting practice before a May 3 game against the Royals.
Shagging fly balls in the Kauffman Stadium outfield, something the freakishly athletic reliever did his entire professional life, Rivera collapsed in front of the centerfield wall, having suffered a right ACL tear.
Alex Rodriguez, watching from behind the batting cage, could be seen on camera twice mouthing “Oh my God.” Manager Joe Girardi took off on a sprint toward center, with the training staff not far behind.
Six hours later, the visitors’ clubhouse resembled one that had taken a brutal season-ending loss in the postseason. The funereal setting had nothing to do with the 4-3 loss to the Royals; it stemmed from the realization that the career of one of the game’s all-time players might have been over.
“That one hurts . . . there’s no other way to put it,” Derek Jeter said quietly that night. “You don’t replace him. Someone else can do his job, but you can’t really replace him.”
When asked if he thought he would pitch again, Rivera — speaking about 45 minutes later while leaning on crutches and with his voice cracking slightly — could only offer “at this point, I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Less than 24 hours later, on May 4, Rivera did know.
“I’m coming back,’’ he said in the same clubhouse, this time with a smile. “Write it down in big letters. I’m not going down like this. God willing, if he gives me the strength, I’m coming back. I can’t go down like this. If it takes two, three, four, five, seven months, whatever it takes . . . You don’t go out like this. Not with an injury like that.’’
That night Rivera called himself “a quick healer,” and that proved to be the case. Though there was never a chance of him pitching again in 2012, by Aug. 13 of that season Rivera was throwing off flat ground.
A free agent after the 2012 season, Rivera officially announced in early November his intention to pitch in 2013, and he signed a one-year, $10 million deal, with incentives, with the Yankees by month’s end.
Rivera was healthy when he arrived for spring training and threw two bullpen sessions within the first week after pitchers and catchers reported. The progression was ahead of his typical spring training schedule (which Rivera, by the middle of his career, was all but mapping out on his own).
“The tank is almost empty,’’ he said that morning in Tampa.
But not completely.
At the age of 43, Rivera, his cutter as deadly as ever, earned his 13th trip to the All-Star Game. He was named MVP after pitching a scoreless eighth inning in the American League’s 3-0 victory at Citi Field. The loudspeakers played “Enter Sandman” as he trotted to the mound, accompanied by a deafening roar and appreciative standing ovations from both dugouts.
Rivera saved 44 games and posted a 2.11 ERA in the last of his 19 seasons. That gave him a record 652 saves to go along with five World Series titles, and he eventually became the first player unanimously voted into the Hall of Fame.
Indeed, the lasting image of his incomparable career would not be that of Rivera crumpled in a heap at the base of an outfield wall.
“Definitely, if I would have finished the season last year [2012], I would have retired last year, definitely,’’ he said in 2013 at his retirement news conference. “But I didn’t want to leave like that.”