The New York Yankees were in free fall, having failed to win a World Series in 17 years and had not played in one in 14 years -- the Bronx Bombers' longest drought since before the days of Babe Ruth. Then along came four young players whose powerful impact returned the franchise to its former glory. They were a diverse group from different parts of the globe: Mariano Rivera, a right-handed pitcher from Panama, who was destined to become the all-time record holder in saves and baseball’s greatest closer; Derek Jeter, a shortstop raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who would become the first Yankee to accumulate 3,000 hits; Jorge Posada, an infielder-turned-catcher from Puerto Rico, who would hit more home runs than any Yankees catcher except the legendary Hall of Famer Yogi Berra; and Andy Pettitte, a left-handed pitcher born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who would win more postseason games than any player in baseball history. This excerpt of Core Four by Phil Pepe reveals how the Yankees signed Rivera and might have lost him before he appeared in a major league game.

Major league baseball scouts were not exactly beating a path to Panama in 1990, not like they were to San Pedro Macoris, the Dominican Republic; Santurce, Puerto Rico; or Caracas, Venezuela. In 1990, you journeyed to Panama to discover future stars of World Cup soccer or for the shrimp and sardines, not for baseball players.

On February 17, 1990, when the Yankees signed an undrafted, free agent amateur named Mariano Rivera from the tiny fishing village of Puerto Caimito, Panama, a transaction deemed so inconsequential it never so much as made the agate of the New York newspapers. Only 24 Panamanians had ever appeared in a major league game, most of them up for little more than the proverbial cup of Jaramillo Especial.

On the list of big leaguers from Panama were former Yankees Hector Lopez and Roberto Kelly; catcher Manny Sanguillen, a mainstay for the Pittsburgh Pirates that won six National League East titles and two World Series in the 1970s; Rennie Stennett, who tied a major league record on September 16, 1975, when he banged out seven hits for the Pirates in a game against the Chicago Cubs; and one Hall of Famer, Rod Carew, whose Panamanian mother gave birth to him on a racially segregated train in the town of Gatun in the Panama Canal Zone. When Carew was 14, his family migrated to the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, where he attended George Washington High School, which also produced Manny Ramirez and Dr. Henry Kissinger.

Mariano Rivera was born on November 29, 1969, four months after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, 44 days after the New York Mets won their first World Series in a resounding upset of the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles, and eight days after the birth of Ken Griffey Jr., half a world away. As a child, young Mariano whiled away the idle hours playing baseball, but not with any thought of making it a career. Soccer was his game. Baseball was fun, a diversion played with baseballs handmade of fish netting and electrical tape, bats constructed from tree branches, and gloves formed out of milk cartons. When he was 12, Mariano's father bought him his first real glove. His formative years were good times, so good Mariano didn't realize he was poor.

"I didn't have much," he once said. "I didn't have anything. But what we had, I was happy. My childhood was wonderful."

Finished with Pedro Pablo Sanchez High School at 16, Mariano did what most Panamanian boys his age did: he went to work. Six days a week he toiled on a commercial fishing boat captained by his father. On the seventh day he played sports.

"On the boat, I liked looking at all the different fish," he said. "But my father's life was not for me. There's no future in fishing."

Perhaps he could escape as a professional soccer player. Baseball was not an option, but he continued to play for fun with Panama Oeste, a local amateur team.

If it was fate that brought a man named Herb Raybourn, director of Latin American operations for the New York Yankees, to Puerto Caimito, where he first saw Rivera, a 155-pound shortstop -- "He had a good arm and good hands, but I didn't think he could be a major league shortstop so I passed on him." -- it was good fortune that sent Raybourn back to Puerto Caimito to check out reports about a promising pitching prospect named Mariano Rivera. Raybourn was confused. The Mariano Rivera he knew in Puerto Caimito was a shortstop, and no prospect. Nonetheless, Raybourn returned to the tiny fishing village and arranged a workout for the young shortstop-turned-pitcher.

What Raybourn saw hardly blew the scout away, a pitcher topping out at 84 miles per hour, not the stuff of legend or future stardom. But Raybourn saw something special in the skinny right-hander: a joy for the game and a strong desire to excel. He also saw rare athleticism and an easy, fluid pitching motion that caused the baseball to jump out of his hand and enable him to get excellent movement on his pitches.

Raybourn reported his findings to the Yankees, who authorized him to offer the young pitcher a signing bonus of $3,000, tantamount to a king's ransom to a child of Puerto Caimito, Panama. Rivera eagerly accepted the offer, hoping this was his chance to avoid the life of a fisherman. It also was the only offer he received.

"I was there the year before and I passed on him," said Raybourn. "I went back a year later and we got him. Why didn't any of the other scouts sign him before I got back to Panama?"

Why, indeed!

Somewhat frightened and extremely naive -- he had never been out of Panama, had never been on an airplane, and he spoke no English -- Mariano, considered nothing more than a fringe prospect, flew to Tampa to join the Yankees affiliate in the Gulf Coast Rookie League, the lowest rung on the team's minor league ladder.

Rivera's Tampa Yankees teammates were future major leaguers Russ Springer, Ricky Ledee, Shane Spencer, and the Yankees' first-round draft pick that year, Carl Everett. Rivera's manager was 29-year-old Glenn Sherlock of Nahant, Massachusetts, a catcher who had been the 21st-round selection of the Houston Astros in the 1983 amateur draft and who had spent seven minor league seasons in the Astros' and Yankees' farm systems without ever reaching the major leagues.

Sherlock, now the bullpen coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks, remembers the young Rivera as "very quiet -- he didn't speak a lot of English -- a very nice kid that went about his business in a professional manner.

"Obviously we didn't know at that time that he was going to be maybe the greatest relief pitcher of all time. I don't know if anybody is that smart. What we did see was that he had a very good work ethic and he did a lot of the little things like the bunt defenses and the pitchers fielding practice. He put a lot of effort into it. He was an extremely good athlete.

"Hoyt Wilhelm [the Hall of Famer, one of the great knuckleball pitchers of all time and a pioneer relief pitcher for 21 seasons in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s] was our pitching coach and he used to play a game with the pitchers so they could have some fun. He'd let them bat and shag and Mariano could really hit and he could really play the outfield. He was clearly one of the best athletes we had on the team."

As his first season was winding down, Rivera had pitched in 21 games and had the lowest earned run average in the league, but he was five innings short of qualifying for the league ERA title, for which the Yankees offered

What started eight years ago as a road trip with several buddies has turned into a hockey fan's dream vacation.

You see, this group of friends and diehard Vancouver Canucks fans have built hockey's answer to the Field of Dreams once a year every year since 2006, and it's just as cool as it sounds.

In a short documentary released on YouTube recently, the young men travel north from Vancouver to Green Lake, B.C. There, they carve out an NHL-sized rink on a frozen lake. It started small, but now the rink includes boards, backstops and even a portable light tower.

“I don’t know how to explain it," Steve Correia, one of the friends, says in the movie, “but it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever done."

The guys play eight to ten hours of hockey every day for five freezing days. The frostbite is worth it, they say, for all the fun they have on the ice.

They first filmed their trip in 2011, and the original movie was so popular that they've released a sequel: "Make Hockey Happen: Open Ice."

Nate Robinson was not supposed to be in this position.

When the diminutive guard signed with the Chicago Bulls last summer, his contract wasn't even guaranteed for the whole season. Robinson was brought in for insurance, because star guard Derrick Rose was expected to miss most of the season after recovering from knee surgery. It's safe to assume that the Bulls were not expecting Robinson to be a key contributor, much less a starter, for the team in the playoffs.

Yet, lo and behold, Robinson is the unlikely reason that the Bulls will take a 3-2 series lead over the Brooklyn Nets into Game 6 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals series.

Robinson came off the bench in Game 5 and did nothing but pour in 23 fourth-quarter points, including 12 straight down the stretch, to lead the Bulls on a wild and potentially season-saving comeback win. Only Michael Jordan had scored more points in a single quarter of a playoff game for Chicago.

"Nate's one of those guys who can change a game," Brooklyn coach P.J. Carlesimo said after the game. "Whether you want to call him an X-factor or whatever, there's nights when he gets it going that he's very, very difficult to defend."

Robinson, once known for his stature-defying dunks (listed at 5-foot-9, he is a three-time NBA Slam Dunk contest winner), has established himself as an offensive spark plug. He makes up for his questionable decisions -- ill-timed shots -- with bursts of scoring rarely seen from players his size.

The wait for a gay NFL player might not end with a high profile press conference or an embarrassing leaked photo.

Instead, the anticipation could come to a much more subdued conclusion if and when a team signs free agent kicker Alan Gendreau.

The 23-year-old Gendreau, who has been out since he was 15, had a stellar career at Middle Tennessee State. Gendreau made headlines during a breakout sophomore season in 2009, connecting on 18 of 22 field goals and 50 of 51 extra points. He also hit a game-winner at Maryland as time expired. That year Gendreau was one of 20 semifinalists for the Lou Groza Award, given to college football’s top kicker. As a junior in 2010, Gendrau went 10 of 12 on field goals.

Gendreau, whose story was documented by Outsports, struggled in his senior year, missing four of his first five kicks. And even though he would go on to become the leading scorer in Sun Belt Conference history, he figured his professional options were limited after struggling in his final year at Middle Tennessee State.

After no NFL team showed interest last year, Gendreau he moved to Washington, D.C., and took a position as an assistant at a real estate firm. But when he worked as a coach at a football camp last summer, his fellow coaches noticed his skill and suggested he give the NFL another try.

So now Gendreau is back on the field and hoping to land somewhere as a free agent. He told Outsports that he regrets not making more of a push last year.

"Right now, looking back when I’m 40, I can’t say I gave it my best shot," Gendreau said. "I can't say I really tried to make it into the NFL. Last year I did it half-assed. If I don’t give it everything I have now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life."

While it's a long shot for most kickers, much less one who hasn't played in a year, to break into the NFL, many respected NFL minds think Gendreau has a shot.

Michael Husted, a former NFL kicker, thought highly of Gendreau after seeing the prospect kick at his camp in San Diego.

"I was impressed with him," Husted told Outsports. "From a kicking standpoint I thought he had a lot of talent. He definitely has the potential to kick at the next level."