It’s a good week to be a former nemesis of Mariano Rivera.
Edgar Martinez made it into the Hall of Fame on Tuesday — alongside Rivera — and now the player who scored perhaps the biggest run ever against Rivera is a step closer to making it back to the majors as a manager.
Jay Bell, who scored the winning run in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series on Luis Gonzalez’s flare single off Rivera in the bottom of the ninth, was named manager of the Yankees’ Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre affiliate. He will replace Bobby Mitchell, who was not retained.
He spent the past two seasons managing in the Yankee organization, first with Class-A Tampa and last season with Double-A Trenton. His teams finished in first place in their division each year.
The 53-year-old Bell coached with Arizona, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati before joining the Yankees — thanks to a phone call in 2016 to former manager Joe Girardi.
After not working in baseball that season, Bell reached out to Girardi, who put him in touch with Gary Denbo, the Yankees’ vice president of player development at the time. Denbo left the Yankees to join Derek Jeter in Miami and is now the Marlins director of player development and scouting.
After taking the job with Tampa in 2017, Bell expressed a desire to manage in the majors at some point and recalled his history-making moment in 2001.
“We beat the best of the best,” Bell said of Rivera two years ago. “It was a cool thing.”