Mariano Rivera will not be the only player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week on his first try. Public ballots have shown overwhelming support for Roy Halladay, the former ace of the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies. If Halladay were here, he would surely acknowledge that Rivera, the sublime Yankees closer, helped nudge him over the Cooperstown border.

Halladay died on Nov. 7, 2017, at age 40 when the small plane he was piloting crashed into shallow water near Holiday, Fla. In one of his final interviews, he enthusiastically recalled a tutorial with Rivera at the 2008 All-Star Game, and a tip that gave him his final burst of brilliance.

“I’d been watching Mariano a lot, and my cutter was pretty good, but it wasn’t always consistent,” Halladay said in March 2017 at a picnic table beneath palm trees at the Phillies’ training complex in Clearwater, Fla. “There were times where it would be really good and other times when it just wasn’t as effective. Mariano really helped me.”

I had chased Halladay for more than two years to set up this conversation. I needed his perspective for a book I was writing on pitching — “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches,” to be published this spring by Doubleday — and knew he would be a critical voice.