The Baseball Analysts: Greenhouse: The Bridge to Mariano

Weeee! More righteous than an all out Throgs/Throggs Neck Bridge dispute!

In 1996, Nelson pitched in a team-leading 73 games, Rivera became the best reliever in baseball, and the Yankees won their first World Series in 18 years. And Wetteland won his Rolaids Relief Man Award.

But Wetteland left New York, and here’s where the story gets interesting.

Jeff pitched his plan to Joe.

Step 1: Assemble the best group of position players and starting pitchers in baseball so that the bullpen doesn’t really matter.
Step 2: Install Rivera as closer, ensuring a dominant bullpen.
Step 3: Build a ####### bridge.

And so it was. Joe Torre commissioned the building of a bridge. The Bridge to Mariano. Jeff was the architect, but he recruited his childhood friend Mike Stanton to help him build. Together, alternating shifts, they built the bridge. And what a bridge it was. It had aqueducts and arches and triangles and suspensions and all that stuff that makes bridges not spectacularly collapse. Quieter than the Bridge on the River Kwai. More flip than the Flipper Bridge. It was the most important bridge in the history of bridges. From 1997-2000, Stanton pitched to a 4.17 ERA and Nelson pitched to a 3.08. Their pitching was fine, and not much was made of it at the time. But what a bridge! How can you blame them for being pedestrian relievers when they were so busy building a ####### bridge?!?