But he’s been slipping, so slowly as to be almost imperceptible, like continental drift. Joe Torre has hastened the process along the past couple of years, riding Rivera through the regular season, wringing two-inning saves out of him, running him out to keep the Yankees in first place day after day after arm-numbing day.

Torre’s won a lot of games, and when you work for George Steinbrenner, you had better. But there’s been too much emphasis on winning every day no matter the cost and no sense that it’s a long, long season and that sometimes you have to give guys days off and accept a loss, if that’s the price you have to pay.

Add the overuse to the normal wear and tear on an arm that’s been closing games for eight straight years, and you are going to have some slippage. And with Rivera, it doesn’t take a lot to make a big difference.

You knew something was wrong last year when he couldn’t close out Game 4 of the ALCS, the game that would have put the Yankees in the World Series. He failed again in that series. Then he went home to Panama and did something he had never done during an off-season before — he didn’t touch a baseball.

Again, he and the Yankees denied it meant anything.

Rivera smiled as he answered questions in the clubhouse, even in his worst moment still a gentleman and a sportsman.

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"It’s crazy, crazy you know. What can I say?" he said, words coming out of his mouth even as he was saying nothing. "Those things happen in a baseball game. I was happy with the pitches. I feel comfortable with the selection that I make. It just didn’t happen. This is the third game. Thank god this happened now and not later."

He’ll be back in a game as soon as the Yankees have a slim lead in the ninth — or, by Torre’s standards, perhaps the eighth. He’ll get his saves. But it’s clear the Red Sox are far from afraid of him. It’s almost as if their strategy has become one of giving their rivals a lead, then knocking out Mo in the ninth.

And if Rivera can’t be relied on to beat the Red Sox, what good is he? You can get a lot of people to close out Kansas City. But ultimately you have to beat Boston. If you can’t do that, you can’t go to the World Series and collect that 27th World Championship flag.

"Yesterday’s yesterday," Rivera said. "I can’t live in the past. I live in the present."

In a way, those are depressing words. Because the Mo of yesterday was a different pitcher than the Mo of the present.

Go back four years. Back then, Rivera’s devastating cut fastball reduced bats to kindling, sawing them off, cracking them, or just plain shattering them. He never relied on striking you out, just literally taking the bat out of your hands.

You don’t see that as much anymore. The ball still moves and he still gets it up in the low to mid 90s, but batters make just a little more contact and his control is just a little bit less precise and his results are just a little bit worse.

And all it takes in this game is a little bit. Batters can fail seven times out of 10 and still be among the best in the business. Starting pitchers can fail four times in 10 and be among the best. Closers, like left tackles and place kickers, can succeed eight times in 10 and be failures.

Torre said there’s no problem. Rivera, he says, is still the best there is.

"We wouldn’t be where we are right now if it wasn’t for him," said Torre.

He didn’t catch the irony of that, because where Torre was right then when he said that was in a losing clubhouse.

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