Yankees’ Mariano Rivera Is the Last No. 42

By HARVEY ARATON
NYT

She had long wanted to meet him, but when they finally shook hands this past winter it was Mariano Rivera who was captivated by the presence of Rachel Robinson. He wears the number. She lived the legacy.

“It was wonderful,” he said. “I was honored.”

Rivera is the last of a dozen players who were allowed to continue to wear number 42 — made famous by Rachel Robinson’s husband, Jackie — when Major League Baseball retired it in 1997. It happened to be the same year Rivera became the Yankees’ closer.

Two years earlier, when the clubhouse attendant first handed Rivera his jersey, he was a 25-year-old Panamanian rookie with no idea that the number on the back symbolized the breaking of baseball’s color line on April 15, 1947.

But he has saved a few games over the last 13 years, always with a persistent professionalism. He grew nicely into greatness.

(Original here.)