Rivera himself was succinct and to the point about his job: “I get the ball, I throw the ball, and then I take a shower.”

For fans who grew up watching No. 42 or have followed him for the last 19 seasons, he has become the embodiment of the Yankees at their very best: not the big-spending, patched-together All-Star team that chased after the likes of Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown, but the team that Rivera, along with Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams, defined. The team always came first for these homegrown Yankees, and they played with brotherly dedication and collective pride.

Rivera’s retirement is a melancholy moment for the Yankees and their fans. Williams retired in 2006, Posada last played in 2011, and Pettitte was scheduled to pitch his final game Saturday. Jeter will be the only one to return next year — and to a team in need of reimagining and rebuilding, and possibly fated to some long years in the baseball wilderness.

That the beloved and seemingly ageless Sandman is exiting this year not only means the end of a golden era, but also reminds us of the swift and unrelenting passage of time. The perfect ending everyone yearned for after the Rivera tribute last Sunday at Yankee Stadium was a win for Andy and a save for Mariano, but that was not to be. And yet, the larger narrative of Rivera’s career remains a storybook one.

The son of a fisherman, he grows up playing baseball on a beach in Panama with a milk carton for a glove, a stick for a bat and whatever was available for a ball; after being signed by a Yankees scout for $3,500, he does his apprenticeship in the minors, joins the Yankees and struggles at first, and then suddenly hits his stride. He wins a championship in 1996 as the setup man for John Wetteland and, soon, leaps into hyperspace as the closer, becoming such a feared adversary that opponents will talk about needing to win games against the Yankees in seven or eight innings before he takes the mound.

In the last month or so, the pace of Rivera tributes has accelerated, within baseball and the news media, and also among fans on Twitter and Facebook, on radio call-in shows, and even in an AT&T-sponsored “Thanks for the Mo-Ments” promotion. They recite Rivera’s luminous stats, cite songs (like Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” or Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye”) they would dedicate to him, and trade memories of his clutch performances: those emotional World Series wins; Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series against the Red Sox (won in 11 innings by Aaron Boone’s home run); his record- setting 602nd save with a perfect ninth inning against the Minnesota Twins in September 2011.

Such outpourings of love are a testament to the intimate and deeply felt karmic relationship that has developed over two decades between Rivera and Yankee fans, and New York City — a relationship that has been heightened, perhaps, by his job as the closer. No one has been more of a team player than the humble and loyal Rivera, and yet his was a strangely solitary job: taking the field not alongside his teammates but alone, at the end, with the heavy responsibility of saving the game for them all.

The photographs and videos of Rivera running toward the mound from the bullpen — shot from behind, No. 42 starkly outlined on his impeccably crisp pinstripes — have given way to similar images (in newspapers, and on T-shirts and souvenir pins) showing him striding not into the electric blur of Yankee Stadium but into some less immediately recognizable realm. Jogging into the future and retirement. And through the gates of Cooperstown and into the forever of history.