WHY MARIANO IS THE BEST

So Bleeding Yankee Blue readers have spoken and hands down, Mariano Rivera is your favorite Yankees pitcher ever....EVER! In it’s rich history, Mo is the man you chose. You know what? I tend to agree with that. He’s electric. Without a doubt I still go back to the old school guy choosing Ron Guidry myself, but let's face it, it's a personal choice when choosing from our poll this time. Picking Mariano is not a wrong answer. In fact there was no wrong answer. So let’s analyze the poll. Here are the results:

Out of 127 people that voted, Mariano Rivera received 44 votes. That was followed by Andy Pettitte with 24 and in third place was Ron Guidry with 19. It’s good to see that my fluff piece on my love for Gator didn’t sway you, Read WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE PITCHER OF ALL TIME? I'm not going to lie, I was surprised that someone like Whitey Ford only received 15 votes and someone like CC Sabathia, or Waite Hoyt or Red Ruffing received less than 3 votes. I mean Ruffing was a terrific pitcher back in the day and Whitey was one of the greatest. Sabathia is pitching now and clearly in everyone’s view every 5th day and he's awesome to see perform, plus he numbers reflect that. It’s interesting and the only thing I can think of is maybe because of the Yankees incredible run since 1996, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte just stick in our minds as being part of some of the greatest Yankee teams ever in the modern era, am I right? Even someone like David Wells received 4 votes and Mike Mussina received 7 too, so clearly these guys may be more popular because of their recent history. I get it, I'm just saying...

Now I chose 15 pitchers for you to vote from, and yes, there are plenty of guys I left out and they were write-in votes and they should have been...people like Orlando Hernandez were mentioned on Twitter and Tommy John was suggested in our comments section of the poll post. Again, no pitcher is the wrong answer, it's a personal choice. I could have made the list 40 guys, but then it just gets out of hand. I wanted to keep it to 15 and when that happens, guys don’t make the cut. It wasn’t a slight, it was just the way I conducted the poll. Hell, someone may have thought Rick Rhoden was their favorite, but he wasn’t on the list, see what I mean?

So yeah, hands down Mariano is the greatest, even without the poll I think it’s safe to say coming off a season where he became the All-time Saves leader, he’s truly the man, but it was just shocking to me that guys that were part of the Yankees rich history didn’t get too many votes. Goose Gossage only received 2 votes... I expected more. Lefty Gomez received 1, I expected at least as many as Whitey, and Roger Clemens received 3. Oh yeah...Allie Reynolds only received 2. Very interesting.

In the end, I hope you had fun with this poll and we’ll be conducting more very similarly to this one soon. Look for it and thanks for participating.

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