With lead to protect, Mo was always main man

The postseason is looming, and when the best teams in baseball meet with everything on the line, there’s little doubt that the game will often rest in the hands of the men pitching the ninth inning. When those times come, some of the best closers take the mound.

Each time they jog in from the bullpen, they can only hope to live up to the legacy of the man who closed games better than anyone, especially in October: Mariano Rivera.

Rivera, in his 19-year Major League career, protected leads like no one else has before or since. For the Yankees, No. 42 saved the game 652 times, an MLB record. And that was only in the regular season.

Learn more about how the greatest closer of all time protected leads

Come the playoffs, the most dominant closer ever somehow became even more indomitable. Rivera, who won five World Series championships with New York, was the king of pitching in the postseason, in the tensest of situations.

“I think you look for those moments,” Rivera said this August at Yankee Stadium, when the Yanks unveiled his plaque in Monument Park. “I must be a masochist, but I looked for those moments.”

In 96 playoff appearances — also a record for pitchers — totaling 141 innings, …

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