“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”
That quote by Lance Armstrong, and the first part uttered by Anthony Rizzo Monday, is the reason Rizzo is back in the Yankees lineup, on the ALCS roster and hitting eighth as the first baseman in Game 1.
Rizzo suffered two fractured fingers on the final weekend of the regular season, but just over two weeks later, he’s still at the same spot he was then: it’s all about pain tolerance, and he’s ready to tolerate it.
“Zero,” Rizzo said Monday when asked where he is on a scale of 1-10, pain-wise. “It's just pain. It's temporary, and the 50,000 people in the stands and the adrenaline and what's at stake is going to outweigh any pain I'll be feeling.”
Rizzo worked out over the weekend, hitting and fielding and doing everything he would normally on a pre-series workout day, and the way he recovered – “I woke up yesterday and basically felt the same as Saturday,” he said – pretty much told him he was as good as he was going to get.
And for manager Aaron Boone, that was good enough, as he never really looked at Rizzo’s availability as ‘he has to be ready for Game 1,’ but more of ‘can he contribute?’
“It was more like do I think he's ready, are you ready?” Boone said. “I deliberated on it until last night. I think just going back, he got hit on that Saturday and really didn't want to go on the IL based on the injury, and we knew it was a long shot going into the Division Series, but didn't put him on with the caveat like, you've got to be super honest with where you're at with me on this the whole time. I actually saw him take some swings in the cage before the Division Series, and I was like, ‘oh, that was pretty good,’ but we knew that wasn't quite where he needed to be. He obviously has had a lot of treatment over the next ten days from there, and was pretty adamant yesterday that he's ready to go. Trainers feel like he's in a good spot. I feel like just watching him out in the field defensively, he looks very Anthony-ish.”
Rizzo has a brace that goes in his glove and some extra padding in his glove for protection, and he has some extra protection to go over his batting glove to keep those two fingers safe, but other than that
“I feel confident in both ends, but if I slide, I'll probably slide with my right hand up,” he said. “That's probably about it.
Other than that, I feel like I'm at full tilt and ready to go.”
He’s happy to be back, of course, and to a man, so are the Yankees.
“I've had opportunity throughout my career to play a good amount of postseason baseball, and this is what you play for. The clock is only ticking on my age and getting older. You just never know when you're going to have an opportunity to play for a pennant again, ever again. You can't take any of this for granted,” Rizzo said. “To be here, Game 1, at Yankee Stadium…just trying to just contain my adrenaline right now and save it all for the game. It was extremely hard (to miss the ALDS) but I just couldn't do it, so it was the right decision for the team and for everyone involved; this is what you train for, so to be on the bench, it's more stressful than playing. It's really hard to control your emotions on the bench than it is when you play. But it was a fun series and I felt super engaged, and felt like I kept my own playoff adrenaline running.”
Added Juan Soto: “It means a lot. He's one of the veteran players that have done it in the past. He knows how to win a World Series and be a champion. What else can you ask for? He's a guy that's going to be out there. He's going to have really good at-bats. He's going to play Gold Glove defense at first base. I think it's really important for the team to have him back.”
And if for some reason Rizzo is compromised during the series, Ben Rice is not on the ALCS roster…but it seems like the Yankees have a couple of Rizzo-approved backup plans in Jon Berti and Oswaldo Cabrera.
“They were really good. Cabby, his versatility has been amazing. The few years he's had in the Big Leagues, he's been so unselfish and such a team guy playing wherever he needs to play. He thrives at every position, and whenever he's in the lineup, he's always a really good at-bat. So him playing first, I think was a little more natural than Berti,” Rizzo said. “Berti kind of had a week to prepare, but he's an infielder. He's athletic. There's little tricks of the trade there that I tell pretty much every first baseman, but at the end of the day, you've got to be athletic, and he is.”
Added Gerrit Cole: “To be honest, Cabby and Berti had a tremendous series for us last time, a lot of credit to them for filling in in that role.”