Mariano Rivera's career came to a ceremonious end in 2013 as the Hall of Fame closer was showered with gifts from his opponents and still pitched to a 2.11 ERA and 44 saves at age 43.
But baseball's all-time saves leader almost had a much more abrupt, devastating end to his career a year earlier.
On May 3, 2012 the New York Yankees were getting ready for a game against the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium, and Rivera was in the outfield during batting practice shagging fly balls — a regular routine of his.
As Rivera was chasing down a fly ball into the gap from utility man Jayson Nix, he lept to make the catch at the warning track but instead of gliding through the air to snag the ball Rivera got caught between the grass and the dirt and he collapsed onto the warning track.
Manager Joe Girardi and trainer Steve Donohue came sprinting out of the dugout to attend to Rivera, while Alex Rodriguez, waiting his turn to hit, could be seen shouting, "Oh my God, oh my God."
Rivera had to be carted off the field and taken to a hospital to have an MRI which revealed a torn ACL and torn meniscus in his right knee. His 2012 season was over, and it was entirely possible that his career was over at that point, too.
The Yankees would go on to lose the game that night, 4-3, but the conversation throughout the evening was whether or not Rivera being carted off the field would be the final image of his Hall of Fame career. There was chatter throughout spring training and in the early part of the year that 2012 would be Rivera's final season, and with the injury added to the mix, it was hard to fathom No. 42 taking the mound again.
The very next day, Rivera put an end to that speculation.
"I'm coming back," he told reporters. "Write it down in big letters. I'm not going out like this. I love to play the game. To me, going out like this isn't the right way."
Rivera would indeed come back the next year and put together one last All-Star season.
While he would not go out closing the final game of the World Series, his final moment of his career was still a special one: Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte, his Yankees teammates since 1995 and minor-league teammates before that, came to take Rivera out with two outs in the top of the ninth in the final home game of the season.
It was an emotional scene in the Bronx, and while the Yankees did not win the game, it was the much more appropriate end to Rivera's career than what transpired during batting practice in Kansas City on May 3, 2012.
