XM MLB Chat: Jerry Green in Panama thinks of Rod Carew and Mariano Rivera

Fuerte Amador, Panama -- "It is a tranquil Saturday morning riding the hook -- the anchor -- on the ship at this Pacific Ocean terminus of the Panama Canal. It is gray, humid, and off in the distance the skyscraper towers of Panama City are visible...

"The Panama Canal is the United States' second most important gift to Panama," I told a ship's audience the other day as we were sailing toward the canal.

"The first is ... baseball."

Nobody laughed.

Somewhere back there on land, along the edge of the canal, Rod Carew was born. The greatest hitter in the history of Panama, a Hall of Famer, a craftsman with a bat.

And down there, off the starboard side, behind the tall buildings of Panama City, Mariano Rivera was born -- 40 years ago this Sunday. Another magical athlete, with his five World Series championship rings,

the greatest relief pitcher in the history of major league baseball.

It was over there that he learned his craft, the cut fastball that continues to mesmerize batters for the Yankees....

I have, for 70 years or so, aspired to make a transit of the Panama Canal aboard a ship. Jumping from port to starboard, forward to aft, with a camera in hand, with a GPS to fix the latitudes and longitudes, with a pair of binoculars to scope in on the other ships, the freighters. From Atlantic to Pacific.

I achieved this fantasy on Friday -- all day on deck, hither and yon. First entering the Gatun Locks. And after 229 snaps of my cameras, the Coral Princess, lowered, and emerged from the Miraflores Locks....

And throughout the day, my mind wandered to Carew and off to Rivera and back to Carew.

How could such a small country produce such ballplayers?

Carew was born on a railroad train along the shoreline of the Gatun Locks, in what then was the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone. His first baseball was learned in Panama, before the family moved to the United States.

Carew was one of my favorite people when he was playing. It seemed every time I went to Tiger Stadium when he played for the Twins and then the Angels he would ring out a double to right-center to start the game. Once I recall he changed the pattern. He hit a home run into the upper deck to start the game.

Carew won seven American League batting championships.

One year he was the only batting champion in history who did not hit a home run during the season.

He was a quiet man. Never flamboyant. He used a baseball bat as a tool. He was the type of batsman I especially admired.

I never cared for the beefy home run hitters who produce the highlights for ESPN's Baseball Tonight.

I preferred the hitters who transformed hitting a baseball into an art form. Ted Williams, the best hitter of my lifetime, and perhaps ever. George Brett, Tony Gwinn, Al Kaline.

Rod Carew did not care much for sports reporters after a while. The Minnesota and Los Angeles journalists told me he was sullen, that he seldom talked to them.

He talked to me a bit one day at Tiger Stadium. Not a lot. He was private and didn't reveal much except some thoughts about his craft.

I wrote in a column for The Detroit News that Rod Carew belonged in a museum. I wrote that he was a statue.

You're always told that athletes, especially baseball players, never cared to read the papers.

Well, I was in the American League clubhouse before an All-Star Game at old Comiskey Park in Chicago. Inside the cramped room, his back to his locker, Rod Carew smiled at me.

"Thanks for the column," Carew told me.

That in itself was special. A ballplayer thanking a journalist for his words.

I never had the pleasure of interviewing -- or trying to interview -- Mariano Rivera.

I learned that his first baseball glove was a cardboard milk carton. The batters used tree limbs. And the baseballs were old, scarred, torn and kept together by tape. His first field was the pavement of a city street.

In my imagination, I picture Rivera this Saturday returning to his playing grounds, a street in Panama City. I see him wearing a Yankees cap and teaching baseball to young Panamanians. The passage of the game that we Yanks exported to Panama,

I presume a century or so ago, when we were building the canal.

It has not been my inclination to admire the Yankees. They were too smug, too arrogant. They were a ballclub built via George Steinbrenner's money.

Yet, for some reason, I've changed those opinions. The ballplayers and their professionalism -- Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada, and particularly Mariano Rivera -- are the reason for my renewed admiration for the Yankees and for their success."

"Trip to Panama brings thoughts of Rod Carew, Mariano Rivera," Jerry Green, Detroit News, 11/28/09

Happy Birthday to Mo.