Mariano Rivera is old, and wolves are after him.

One of the greatest canards in sportswriting is the ongoing concern for a player's "legacy", whereby the columnist suggests that an aging athlete retire in order to protect those misty-colored memories of the athlete at their best, instead of tainting them with images of a descent into mortality. The sad spectacle of Willie Mays stumbling around the outfield for the Mets is inevitably brought up, and for extra credit you get call-outs to Johnny Unitas in Chargers powder blue. And then comes the handwringing, and the inevitable conclusion that the player, whether it be Mike Schmidt or Mariano Rivera, ought to hang it up in order to preserve the narrative of their greatness.
From where I sit, that's an incredible act of chutzpah. To tell an elite athlete, one of the best in the world at what they do, that they should hang it up to preserve a nebulous "legacy" that's really nothing more than an ill-defined narrative, that they should walk away from the millions of dollars that they could potentially earn for a myth, that they should step away from the thing they have trained their whole lives to do and theoretically love doing just so no one in the press box haz a sad.
It is, of course ridiculous, as ridiculous as me walking up to you and saying that hey, you should quit your job because I don't want to spoil the memories of how good you were at unjamming copiers in 2008. It's their decision as to when to hang it up, theirs and the teams that might employ them, and no one else's. They get to be the ones to weigh how much they think their bodies can endure, how well they can perform, how much they still want to compete, how many weeks and months they want to spend away from their families, and what else they might do if they do retire. Me and thee, all we've got is a rooting interest - no skin in the game at all. And while we might think it helps our favorite team if an aging superstar hangs it up - Wallace Matthews' recent piece at ESPN.com at least makes a nod in this direction - wrapping that sort of analysis in the fuzzy logic of "he should quit to protect his legacy" is nothing but sentimental arrogance.
Maybe, as per Matthews' piece, Rivera will retire. Maybe he won't. I'm wagering "concern for his legacy" - already locked down as the greatest situational pitcher of all time - will be at the bottom of things he considers as he makes his decision.
Because, at the end of the day, everybody's memory of Willie Mays is The Catch and his cap flying off, and not of a middle aged man lurching around Shea. Everybody's memory of Steve Carlton is of a slider that sprained batters' knees, not of a nondescript Twins swingman. Everybody's memory of Unitas is of The Greatest Game Ever Played, not a Chargers part-timer.
The legacy takes care of itself. The players know this. We should, too.

No Mo

My parents were Brooklyn Dodgers fans, in the era of "Wait Til Next Year!". On a shelf in my office are yearbooks from those powerhouse teams of the early 1950s. I was probably the only kid south of Paramus who had any idea who the hell George Shuba was, or what an Oisk might have been. And I grew up hating the Yankees for standing in the way, so many times, of those long ago Dodger teams. For preventing Campy and Duke and Junior and Newk and all the rest of them from winning more World Series and assuming their rightful place on Baseball Olympus.
I went to college and grad school in New England. This coincided with the Yankees rousing themselves from their decade-long slumber and once again becoming beasts. They remembered that they were the Yankees, damnit, and proceeded to use the Red Sox as punching bags with greater and greater precision. I lived in Connecticut; I lived in Boston. It was painful to watch.
2009. I found myself in a sports bar the night of the last game of the World Series, my Phillies in the days of thinking they were going to make a dynasty versus the resurgent, unkillable Yankees. Pedro Martinez is on the mount, pitching on guts and baling wire, and it's not getting the job done. The Phils, for their part, are flailing - Ryan Howard chasing, Chase Utley hurting, Jimmy Rollins trying to do too much - and they go down to defeat. The Yankees are world champions, and the Phillies aren't, not any more.
In other words, I hate the Yankees. I am second generation, or maybe third, hating the Yankees.
But no one who calls themselves a baseball fan, be they a Yankee hater born and bred like me, should be glad to hear the news on Mariano Rivera. Love him or hate him, love his team or hate his team, or simply wonder how the hell he does it when everyone, and I mean everyone including the peanut vendors, knows what pitch is coming next, he is an icon of baseball. He is one of the guys you tell your kids "I saw him" about, twenty years down the line. He is, in a very real sense, a legend of the game, and we are all poorer when legends end.
And yeah, this is almost certainly the end. It's nine months to recover from a blown ACL, and Mo had already been hinting he was hanging up the spikes after this year. I can't see him doing the rehab and coming back, not at his age. He might surprise us yet. After all, he's been surprising us every year for the last ten or so - all those "is this the year Mo loses it" stories, all the panic when the annual blown save came along. But the invisible demons conjured by sportswriters had no power; a torn ACL, that's something else.
So Yankees fans and Yankees haters, count yourselves lucky that you got to see him, and count yourself sad that he's gone.