At the age of seven, his youth baseball manager started calling him "Bombo", meaning "fly ball," and the nickname stuck.

During the 1977–78 season, Mayaguez won the Puerto Rican league championship and Caribbean Series in Mazatlán, Mexico, with a record of 5–1.

Other players on that championship team included major leaguers Jim Dwyer, Ron LeFlore, José Morales, Iván DeJesús, Ed Romero, Rick Sweet, Willie Hernández, Danny Darwin, and Kurt Bevacqua.

Although Rivera was signed by the Kansas City Royals shortly after his release by Minnesota, he did not log much more playing time in the majors, adding only five games to his career total, all in 1982.

Also on that team were Bobby Bonilla, Wally Joyner, Tim Belcher, Paul O'Neill, Harold Reynolds, and Randy Ready.

Today he lives in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico and works for a non-profit organization that offers sports clinics to disadvantaged children free of charge.

Rivera also received hundreds of write-in votes in the 1979 University of Minnesota election for student council president, coming in second place.