Book 3 Listicle

The Closer: My Story is the autobiography of Mariano Rivera, published in 2014. As one would expect, the book follows the life of Mariano Rivera, through his early life as a fisherman in a small town in Panama, to his discovery by the New York Yankees, through his movement through the minor leagues, ultimately to his illustrious 17 season career pitching for the Yankees.

One thing that I noticed about this book that is quite obvious is how there are no quotation marks around the quotes. I'm not sure why this is; I think he was maybe going for a style of some sort, but it just ended up being weird. You do get used to it after a while, though.

Speaking of quotes, almost all of them throughout the book are kept short, usually not longer than a sentence. It's also rare that conversations occur in the novel, because Rivera refers to himself in the first person, it causes a tendency for him to tell what he's thinking, rather than show. I don't really agree with this version of storytelling, because I like to see more of the 'in-the-moment' action than a thorough explanation of what happened. Which isn't to say that the latter shouldn't be included at all; it does have a place as clarification for the story.

Another thing that I noticed about this book is that a lot of references to the Bible are made. As one easily gathers throughout the book, Rivera is a devout Christian, which leads to mentions of Bible passages when the opportunity arises to illustrate his point. For example, when Rivera is explaining that he doesn't concern himself with making the most money possible, he uses Hebrews 13:5 to show his reasoning.

Another thing that I noticed about the book is that Rivera omits a whole lot of regular season games. I don't agree with this decision, since the regular season is obviously an enormous part of the MLB, it's weird how it's just glazed over in favor of describing the postseason. I understand that he can't include all 162 games per season in the book, but, in this case, sometimes the only thing that is mentioned about the regular season is the final overall record. It's okay to focus on the Yankees, and not yourself, but it's important to be consistent.

Which brings me to another interesting thing about the book, which is that much of the book is focused on the Yankees' accomplishments (or lack thereof at some points) in the postseason. Most often in the book, Rivera gives an overview of what occurred in the games, for example, "In Game 4 [of the ALCS], our bullpen- David Weathers, Graeme Lloyd, me, and Wetteland- throws six shutout innings after Kenny Rogers is cuffed around early."(Rivera 83)

As for my recommendations, I would recommend this book to all baseball fans, particularly Yankees fans, because, while I learned a lot about Mariano Rivera by reading this memoir, I also learned a lot about recent New York Yankees history as well. I would also recommend this if you are a Christian looking for real life application to faith, because there are plenty of examples from the good times and bad times Rivera has gone through over the course of his career.