The Pecan Park Eagle

L-R: Jeff Luhnow, Reid Ryan, Mariano Rivera, Opie Otterstad, Roger Clemens and Milo Hamilton celebrate and honor the end of Mario’s great career

Sunday, September 29, 2013 saw the merciful end of a log baseball season for Houston Astro fans as the club shut it down with a live 15-game losing streak they will take with them into the 2014 season. It took 14 innings for a 1-1 ties between the Astros and the New York Yankees to melt down into a 5-1 Houston loss, but the guys managed to get it there in keeping with the way their abilities and luck have been playing out all season. As you undoubtedly know by now (and that’s a prefacing statement that begs the question of why I’m telling you again here), the Astros finished their first season in the American League with a record of 51 wins and 111 defeats, the worst team mark in the major leagues for 2013. May it now all rest in peace with a dose of team leadership resolve, one way or another, to put a major league team on the field in 2014 and to succeed in getting the Astros games viewable by audience that is larger than the 900 fans who were reportedly still watching the team via Comcast late in this 2013 season.

Astros playing record aside, a couple of great things did happen at Minute Maid Park Sunday. One you probably know about. The other, I think not – unless you happen to be Mariano Rivera and his family, Mike McCroskey and his daughter, Meghan McCroskey, or a lady from Beaumont named Thompson and her little son, Elijah Thompson. It is a story that plays out in serendipity, on heavenly wings and a background of harps, about the hunger of a young kid for a souvenir from his hero, and through the heart of a champion who was just retiring from baseball today as the greatest closing reliever in the history of the game.

Serendipity lives.

Mariano Rivera Honored Pre-Game by Astros. Mike McCroskey and daughter Meghan McCroskey had gone early to the game to be there for the pre-game honoring of Mariano Rivera. They have four season seats on the ground level rail, just beyond the visitors’ dugout on the third base side. The “problem” was, the people who were to go with them to this last game of the season cancelled out at the last-minute, leaving the McCroskeys with two tickets to two empty seats. That was OK with both Mike and Meghan. As devout fans, they were prepared to ride it out with two empties beside them.

It was all right, that is, until they arrived to find themselves surrounded by Yankee fans and under some potential pressure from the thought of having to encounter a couple of obnoxious Yankee fan prime section seat busters at some point. In fact, a little Yankee fan boy with a sign was already in one of the four McCroskey seats when Mike and Meghan arrived. His mother was sitting in a seat behind them. Rather than wait for a pot luck discussion with less pleasant Yankee fan invaders, Mike took the initiative of inviting the boy and his mother to both join him and Meghan in those two extra seats they owned. The invitees were a Mrs. Thompson and her son Elijah, who turned eight years old today, Monday, September 30, 1913. The father was in the ballpark too, but he apparently was sitting some thirty rows back and there was no more field-side room.

The Thompsons were Yankee fans, as reported. but they were from Beaumont, Mike’s birthplace, and that made their presence OK. Little Elijah Thompson carried with him a sign that read: “Please sign a ball for me, Mario! I’m turning 8 tomorrow!”

Unfortunately for little Elijah and all other autograph hopefuls. that wasn’t going to happen. After being greeted at home plate by Astros President Reid Ryan and Milo Hamilton, former Yankee teammate Roger Clemens and manager Joe Torre, Mariano was presented with a beautiful original oil painting of his career by artist Opie Otterstad before he graciously spoke to the Houston crowd, asking for their forgiveness and understanding as to why he was not playing in Houston or signing autographs en masse on this special day. Rivera basically wanted that moment in Yankee Stadium when Jeter and Pettitte came out to remove him from his last mound stint to be his final memory of active play. He was also simply too exhausted to sign for the thousands he would have to please in Houston this day and was just too emotionally spent to start. Four or five people still got to him for autographs before his eturn to the Yankee clubhouse.

Old and New Yankee Stadiums were the places that Mario Rivera wanted to remember as the beginning and end of his baseball career.

The Houston fans took Mariano Rivera’s Yankee Stadium “last memory wishes” in stride and understanding. That is, most of them did.

The two Rivera sons came by to greet the MMP crowd.

Later, when no Yankee players of note came down the line to sign for people on the rail prior to the game, Little Elijah Thompson was still holding up his birthday signing appeal card when two teenage boys in black Yankee tee shirts came by the rail, talking with fans. It turns out that they were the sons of Mariano Rivera and they had been attracted into brief conversation with Elijah because of his sign. After no more than a minute, they went away, finally disappearing into the Yankee dugout. About the third inning of the game, one of the attendants came out of the Yankee dugout and approached young Elijah Thompson from the field side of the seating rail.

Little Elijah Thompson (back turned) gets ready to receive the surprise gift of his young lifetime from Mariano Rivera.

“This is for you,” the attendant said, as he handed to Elijah a brand new official MLB ball with an autograph on the sweet spot that read “Mariano Rivera.”

The last autographed ball signed by Mariano Rivera during the total period of his playing career went to Elijah Thompson of Beaumont, TX, one day prior to his 8th birthday.

This was not just any autographed ball. – This was the only and last baseball signed by Mariano Rivera on the the last day of the last game in his team career. Mariano the Man with THE BIG HEART, absolutely did the right thing.

Never underestimate the heart of a champion.

Happy 8th Birthday, Elijah Thompson, wherever you are. Hope you keep that ball safe forever.

And thank you, Michael and Meghan McCroskey, for being the turning wheels on seredipity – and the archangels that made little Elijah Thompson’s 8th birthday one for the ages.

Footnote on Serendipity: This whole chain of events unfolded yesterday, September 29th, which also happens to be the annual Feast Day of St. Michael the Archangel – and we had no idea of that additional spine-chilling detail until Tom Hunter left his comment below. Even that cartoon of Mike McCroskey as “Saint Michael” came before this writer even knew that yesterday was actually St. Michael’s Feast Day.

What’s it all mean? Who knows for sure. It was either an incredible collision of connecting serial coincidences in movement – or else – there was an apparently powerful run of spiritual forces going on in behalf of us all yesterday.

Believe it or not? As always, that decision is up to each of us, but you can put me down on the believer side.

Happy 8th Birthday again, Elijah Thompson. Your story was a gift to the world about love, and heart, and the the spiritual gift to the giver that only comes from unconditional giving.