While we don't know when baseball will be back -- or how long the season will be when it returns -- one Yankees legend doesn't think a team winning a World Series title during a super abbreviated season should carry much weight.
"I don't think you can play a 60-game season and you call yourself a champion," Mariano Rivera said while appearing on ESPN New York's The Michael Kay Show on Friday.
The five-time World Series champion added: "Anything can happen in 60 games. I don't think it's enough. People don't play on all cylinders, the whole teams are different. I don't know. It's a great question, because I don't know what's going to happen if the season is starting in June or July."
MLB announced that it won't return until mid-May at the earliest because of the coronavirus pandemic, but commissioner Rob Manfred has said he hopes to play as much of a 162-game season as possible.
The legendary closer, who didn't seem to specify where an appropriate cutoff would be to to allow World Series bragging rights, believes hitters "will be OK" as players try to stay sharp since spring training was suspended on March 12, but the pitchers "will need the space."
"If this keeps happening like this, the pitchers are going to have a lot of problems with this," Rivera said.
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