Betting on Zeroes for Rivera

Between watching every NBA playoff game on TV and watching Hillary Clinton contemplate using one of her replay challenges to obtain the Democratic presidential nomination, a curious baseball thought struck me the other day:

Mariano Rivera might not give up a single run in 2008.

Now, I'm usually not given to thinking about the New York Yankees, other than checking the scores daily to see if they lost -- when the Yankees and Red Sox both lose, I have two cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon with breakfast -- but I have become absorbed by Rivera's pursuit of perfection.

We are one-quarter through the baseball season and Rivera's ERA is 0.00. I checked with Bill James -- it is a statistical impossibility to have a lower ERA than 0.00.

Rivera has pitched 15 innings in 14 games this year, with 10 saves, allowing six hits, no walks and no runs, earned or otherwise. A couple of other closers, the Phillies' Brad Lidge and the Royals' Joakim Soria, also have 0.00 ERAs, but the otherworldly Rivera is the one destined to go an entire season without allowing a run.

Could it really happen?

Fact: An Iowa man by the name of Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 68 years.

Fact: Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

Fact: Sonny Bono once was elected -- and reelected -- to Congress.

My friends, anything can happen.

(Column Intermission I: Here is the opening line of Chapter 20 of "Living on the Black," literary bon vivant John Feinstein's latest cookie-cutter book on Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina: "During the first nine days of interleague play, it appeared that National League baseball was exactly what the doctor had ordered for the Yankees." And here's the closing line of Chapter 28: "Their fate was in their own hands." The man can certainly turn a phrase.)

Rivera once pitched a record 34 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings without allowing a run in the postseason.