Today’s news is powered by a pitch from The Mick:

• Two of the Baby Bombers got nicked in the Yanks Grapefruit League game on Sunday:

Yankees catching prospect Jesus Montero left Sunday’s Grapefruit League exhibition against the Reds after suffering a strained right groin. …

Yankees manager Joe Girardi said that Montero had been examined by trainer Gene Monahan and that the 19-year-old backstop would miss at least a few games.

Earlier in the contest, Yankees right-hander Jonathan Albaladejo was also forced to exit after being struck in the left calf by a batted ball.

Albaladejo was working in the bottom of the third inning, when Cincinnati’s Jeff Keppinger hit a hard shot up the middle and off the pitcher into center field. …

• Mike Vaccaro of the Post profiles Mariano Rivera:

“People come and people go,” Derek Jeter said the other day, smiling, shaking his head, “and then you have Mo, who isn’t going anywhere.”

The smile thinned a bit.

“Who’d better not be going anywhere,” he said. …

It is Mariano Rivera. It is the ninth inning. It is, as his arm can attest, as often as not a few outs in the eighth inning, too. It is 482 saves in 542 lifetime opportunities, an 88.9-percent success rate that the record books insist is just fourth, all-time, among all relievers with at least 200 save opportunities. …

Especially because last year may have been Rivera’s finest, 39 saves in 40 chances, a 1.40 ERA, all of that at age 38, with more than 800 appearances and close to a thousand innings already on his right arm, elbow, shoulder and rotator cuff.

“I like the idea of being consistent, of being slow and steady and reliable,” Rivera says. “I like that I’m an element of the team the other guys can count on being ready to do my job. That’s what I do. That’s why I’m here.”

• Some of the Bombers have left camp to go play in the WBC:

Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano and Damaso Marte are headed to meet up with the Dominican Republic roster, while Jeter joins a United States squad looking to avenge its second-round exit in 2006. Francisco Cervelli is suiting up for Italy.

“I really am looking forward to it,” Jeter said. “I enjoyed myself, with the exception of the results. We’re going into it hopefully playing a lot better than we did last time. I’m really excited.”

• SI.com reports that Alex Rodriguez met with MLB’s Department of Investigations for about two hours on Sunday.
• Newsday’s Kat O’Brien has a long article on kids in the Dominican Republic and their dreams of playing in the majors.

On Opening Day last spring, 137 of 1,381 active roster or disabled list major league players were Dominican-born, up from just 50 in 1988. Of 7,021 minor leaguers under contract, 3,356 (47.8 percent) were born outside the United States, mostly in Spanish-speaking countries.

Those trends spurred major league clubs to build or lease academies in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela to prepare players. They give not only on-field instruction, but English classes and lessons on cultural differences in the United States. Some major league executives say the most talented players are more likely to fail due to language/cultural problems than for baseball reasons.

• Don’t expect Ray Negron to write his own tell-all book about the Yanks:

“Joe Torre was supposed to be an icon in New York,” Negron said this past week in an interview. “To me, what he did with that book [“The Yankee Years”] was just an insult to everything that’s supposed to be so good about the Yankees.

“You don’t take shots, you don’t talk negative, if you’re a manager. You don’t talk negative about your players. These guys were your players. These guys went to war with you. You don’t do that. That was really bothersome, because I expected more from him.”

• Baseball Digest, the venerable magazine of yore, is now on-line too.
• On this date in 1927, Babe Ruth becomes the highest paid player in major league history when the Yankees announce he will earn $70,000 per season for the next three years. Ruth will sign the historic contract on March 4.

[My take: To put that in perspective, each player in 2009 will nearly six times that amount.]