![\"Head](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Rivera_Mariano_BL-10586-95_NBL.jpg\")
\nThe New York Yankees scouted Mariano Rivera in Panama before signing him to an amateur free agent contract on Feb. 17, 1990. (National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)<\/p>\n
\nThe New York Yankees scouted Mariano Rivera in Panama before signing him to an amateur free agent contract on Feb. 17, 1990. (National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)<\/p>\n
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He was a 20-year-old fringe prospect from Panama, and on Feb. 17, 1990, Mariano Rivera received a $3,000 bonus to sign with the New York Yankees.<\/p>\n
It was the first step on a wholly unlikely journey to Cooperstown.<\/p>\n
Growing up in the Pacific Ocean-village of Puerto Caimito, Rivera fell in love with soccer before going to work on his father\u2019s fishing boat. He was soon playing for a local amateur baseball team as an outfielder \u2013 and had already been dismissed by some scouts as non-big league\u00a0material.<\/p>\n
But when he was asked to pitch in a game in 1989, Rivera found his calling. Soon, Yankees scout Herb Raybourn convinced Rivera to try his hand at professional baseball.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not surprised at how Mariano turned out,\u201d Raybourn said, \u201cbecause nothing scared him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Yankees sent Rivera to their\u00a0rookie\u00a0ball team in Florida, where he dominated younger competition with his live fastball. But an arm injury in 1992 led the Yankees to leave him unprotected in that year\u2019s expansion draft. Neither the Rockies nor the Marlins, however, were interested.<\/p>\n
\nMariano Rivera reached the postseason 17 times across his 19-year career, winning five World Series titles along with 1999 Fall Classic MVP honors. (Tom DiPace\/MLB Photos)<\/p>\n
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In 1995, Rivera was still a starter and not considered to have much of a baseball future. But that summer with Triple-A Columbus, his fastball went from 91 mph to 96 mph over a few appearances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Whoa! Where did this come from?\u2019\u201d Yankees general manager Gene Michael told the\u00a0New York Daily News. \u201cI called down to our people there and asked if those numbers were accurate, and they assured me they were.\u201d<\/p>\n
The uptick in velocity earned Rivera a promotion to the big leagues that year, and by 1996 he had become the primary setup man for closer John Wetteland. The Yankees won the World Series that year, and Wetteland \u2013 who won the World Series Most Valuable Player Award after saving all four New York wins \u2013 left for free agent riches with the Rangers after the season.<\/p>\n
Rivera was now the closer, and in the middle of the 1997 season he perfected the cut fastball that would define the rest of his career. Soon, Rivera would become essentially a one-pitch pitcher \u2013 throwing the darting cutter that every batter knew was coming but few could barrel up.<\/p>\n
Rivera also had a virtually perfect closer\u2019s mentality with a slow heartbeat and limitless courage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so struck by how he\u00a0showed\u00a0absolutely no emotion,\u201d former Yankees closer Goose Gossage told the\u00a0Daily News. \u201cI said, \u2018This kid is going to be awesome.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Mariano](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/_30A6343.jpg\"\/)
\nMariano Rivera\u2019s induction into the Hall of Fame in 2019 marked the first unanimous selection by members of the Baseball Writers\u2019\u00a0Association of America.\u00a0(Milo Stewart Jr.\/National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)<\/p>\n
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Gossage may have actually underestimated Rivera, who would lead the Yankees to four more World Series wins, earn 13 All-Star Game selections and save a record 652 games. He saved 42 more games over 96 postseason appearances, posting an 0.70 ERA over 141 innings.<\/p>\n
His career regular-season ERA of 2.21 ranks first all-time among pitchers who began their career in the Live Ball (post 1919) Era.<\/p>\n
In 2019, Rivera became the first player in the history of the Baseball Writers\u2019 Association of America\u2019s Hall of Fame voting to be unanimously elected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel humbled that I was the one the Lord blessed,\u201d Rivera told the\u00a0Associated Press\u00a0of his unanimous selection. \u201cIt won\u2019t change my life, but it\u2019s something that you know that you were the first one. That is special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Yankees scouted Mariano Rivera in Panama before signing him to an amateur free agent contract…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-472725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}