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The Yankees had been thrashed in Game 6 of the World Series, and their manager, Joe Torre, wanted a clear mind-set for his players before the finale of the 2001 season. He turned to Gene Monahan, the Yankees' trainer for decades.

"I had Geno talk, and he got pretty emotional, about the pride of being a Yankee," Torre said on Thursday, back on the same field here in Arizona. "Mariano, on his own, got up and just talked spiritually about 'It's our game.' "

Hours later, fate reminded Mariano Rivera that he was not in control. When Rivera failed in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Diamondbacks, not the Yankees, won the championship. Even when an outcome seems preordained, baseball can have other ideas.

On Saturday, the Yankees will hold a news conference at which Rivera, baseball's oldest active player at 43, is expected to announce he will retire after this season. The news is no surprise; Rivera would probably be retired already had he not torn a knee ligament last May.

But Rivera did not want to leave that way, crumpled to the warning track during batting practice in Kansas City. A career of such dignity and grace deserves a more dignified farewell. A celebration on the mound, and a parade through Lower Manhattan, would be most fitting.

With the Yankees, in the age of Rivera and Derek Jeter, that has always seemed possible. They have captured five championships, four with Rivera on the mound for the last out. In the other, in 1996, Rivera stifled the Atlanta Braves in the seventh and eighth innings of the finale.

"Man, this guy's nasty," said Craig Kimbrel, Atlanta's current closer and a lifelong Braves fan, recalling how it felt to watch on television as Rivera ousted his favorite team. "Look at all these bats he breaks, and he strikes everybody out."

Kimbrel is 24 years old, with 89 career saves. Rivera did not record a save until age 26. Now he has the record, with 608, and Kimbrel smiled and shook his head when asked about it. There is only one Rivera.

"He's kind of the mold everybody works off of," Kimbrel said. "You want to be as good as he is."

Kimbrel met Rivera last winter, at the New York baseball writers' dinner, and Rivera gave him one piece of advice: stay healthy. The saves record could fall someday, maybe even to Kimbrel, with a lot of health and luck. It will not be Rivera's legacy, anyway.

The postseason distinguishes Rivera from every other reliever, before or since. His regular-season earned run average is 2.21. His postseason E.R.A. — in 96 games against the best competition, under the most pressure — is 0.70.

His rookie season was the first in the era of wild-card playoff teams, so Rivera has had more chances than his predecessors. And the Yankees defied the odds with their success, especially early. Executives call the postseason a crapshoot; Rivera, Jeter, Paul O'Neill and the others called it theirs.

"I don't think anybody will get an opportunity to do in the postseason what he did," Torre said. "It's not that somebody may not be special out there; his career is one thing. But to look what he's done in postseason, it's amazing, it really is. He basically made my career."

Torre — who is here for the World Baseball Classic, which starts for the United States on Friday against Mexico — will be in the Hall of Fame someday, with Jeter and, almost certainly, George Steinbrenner. Already, though, Rivera is exalted among his peers.

David Wright, the Mets' third baseman, once beat Rivera in the ninth inning with a long single over Johnny Damon's head at Shea Stadium. He said he would tell his grandchildren about it someday, never mind that it happened in a May game.

"There's certain players that, when you see them, no matter what you've done or how many years you've been in the game, there's a certain awe about them, and I think Mariano has that," Wright said. "No matter if you're a Yankee, a Met, a Red Sox, whatever, you just have the utmost respect for guys like that."

Rivera has been demonstrative in October, memorably bolting from the dugout to the mound in 2003, overcome with emotion after Aaron Boone's home run won the pennant against Boston. But he has never shown up an opponent, never done anything to disgrace the game. He gives respect and gets it in return.

"He knew how good he was," Torre said. "But it was for him to feel and for us to know."

Rivera could always change his mind between now and Saturday. Whatever he says will not be binding, and he has always said that a greater power guides his decisions.

But this is probably it, and last season's injury reaffirmed the truth Rivera discovered here in 2001. The perfect ending can be painfully elusive. Very few get the Ray Lewis story, in which a retirement announcement inspires a final, joyous ride.

Rivera is leaving the Yankees when they seem especially vulnerable and brittle, lacking obvious successors to the champions who came before. The new collective bargaining agreement has blunted their advantage, limiting their ability to spend on amateur talent and enticing them, so far, to be disciplined about payroll.

This is a strange new world for the Yankees, a portal they would rather not enter, if only they had a choice. But for one more season, when they arrive at the ninth inning with a narrow lead, they can turn back time, watch the master at work, and feel safe.