PHOENIX -- The minor league scouting report dropped on the general manager's desk: Mariano Rivera, 95 miles per hour. Gene Michael just sat and stared, incredulous over the information delivered him from Columbus, Ohio.

	A Mariano Rivera save opportunity has become one of the most automatic things in sports.

Rivera was clocked throwing what? This was the summer of 1995, and Michael grabbed his telephone and started a search for the truth. It had to be the radar gun, right? Something had to be wrong with the gun. Mariano Rivera did not throw 95 miles per hour. This couldn't be.

"I thought it might be a mistake," said Michael, now the Yankees director of scouting. "I checked the gun. The gun was OK. I called other scouts. They said they got the same thing."

Just weeks earlier that summer, the Yankees brought Rivera to the majors to start for the Yankees. He lost his first start, 10-0. They wondered: Does he have it? At the time, Michael discussed a trade for Detroit's David Wells. The Yankees needed a starting pitcher for the pennant push, and Tigers executives wanted that big, long right-hander, Rivera, as part of the package.

Until then, Michael had considered parting with him. In the GM's eyes, Rivera wasn't untouchable. Not until that report plopped on his desk insisting that Rivera, forever clocked between 88 and 91 miles per hour, out of nowhere, started firing 95 mph back in the minors.

Suddenly, everything changed for Mariano Rivera. Everything changed for the Yankees. As to how it happened overnight, the best reason Rivera could offer was "an Act of God."

Michael called the Tigers. Uh, Rivera is staying with us. The Yankees traded for David Cone, made the playoffs for the first time in over a decade, and did something they had no idea would turn out to be the cornerstone of a dynasty: They moved Rivera to the bullpen, clearing the way for him to be the closer.

As Rivera says laughing, "The rest is history."

"He's just like a regular player," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "I know he comes out of the bullpen, but for me, you can look at him like a Bernie Williams or a (Derek) Jeter, because he's a part of everything that we have done. He has been so efficient and so businesslike. I don't remember anyone being like him."

How the ninth best prospect in the Yankees farm system, according to Baseball America, turned into this superstar for the ages, nobody is terribly sure. Yet, there are no mysteries on the mound: "He goes out there, and throws one pitch as hard as he can at you," Paul O'Neill said. "If you are going to look at the one guy we depend on, it's Mariano. The world championships and the things we've done ride on his shoulders."

Nobody touches Rivera now. Nobody beats him. Sometimes, Torre calls him for two innings in the playoffs, sometimes one. It doesn't matter. When Rivera marches out of the bullpen, he's the most automatic moment in sports. He has saved 22 consecutive playoff games, and Whitey Ford, the greatest October Yankee pitcher of all, insists: "There's no question: Rivera is the best reliever in the history of the game."

Rivera doesn't play the part of the angry closer. He's a playful, peaceful man, one who confesses he's a little scared every time that bullpen door swings open. His disposition works for him, but there was a time they doubted him.

After Torre delivered him the closer job in 1997, Sandy Alomar Jr. crushed Rivera with an eighth inning home run in Game 4 of the A.L. Division Series. The Yankees lost the defense of their title, and everyone wondered: What would it do to Rivera? October had its chance to break his spirit in his first season as the stopper, but it didn't.

"When he gave up that home run to Alomar in '97, you have a choice of going one way or the other," Torre said. "You can have that haunt you for the rest of your career, or you grow from it. He certainly has grown from that, and it is reassuring for us."

	Mariano Rivera Relief Pitcher New York Yankees Profile
	2001 SEASON STATISTICS GM W L Sv K ERA 71 4 6 50 83 2.34

The magic of Mariano is born out of a pitch that came to him as mysteriously as the speed gun lighting up at 95 miles per hour: His devastation comes out of a cut fastball, and again, it just happened overnight, out of nowhere.

One day, he was playing catch with Ramiro Mendoza. The ball moved this way, that way and soon Rivera tried it in the games. Nobody could touch it. This is the magic of Mariano Rivera. He listens. He absorbs the game. He still sees himself as the shy, deferential son of a fisherman.

"I've been blessed with the team I play for," Rivera said. "Being around a lot of veteran guys like David Cone, Dwight Gooden, David Wells, (Roger) Clemens, I think helps me in the way that I've grown and matured playing baseball," Rivera said.

Once, on the mound, God spoke to him. Rivera swears it. God talked to him, right there in Atlanta. Back home, it inspired him to construct a church in his little town of Puerto Caimito, Panama. When it comes to Rivera, everyone just smiles and nods with him. They've learned to never doubt him. The Yankees are back in the World Series, and Rivera is lurking in the night. When it's late, the ball goes to him, and the game goes to the Yankees.

Perhaps there's a touch of mystery to the man, but there's no mystery to his deeds. These hitters, they know what's coming, and it's the damndest thing: As hard as they try, they can't disrupt the most automatic moment in sports.

Adrian Wojnarowski of the The Record (Bergen County, N.J.) is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.