A perspective: Mike Mussina

The Moose

If I had to rank sports topics that I love to talk about the most, the Hall of Fame (for all sports) is top three.

It's great to jump into the stats and rankings. It's great to look a guy's career and contributions to the game. It's great to know that some organization created a shrine to that particular game's greatest, brightest, best and most revered.

I'd kill to visit Cooperstown.

However, I doubt I will ever see Mike Mussina name when I do go.

Moose's retirement from Major League Baseball is imminent, it appears, and I think it's important to, at the very least, commemorate his time as a professional baseball player.

When you think of Mike Mussina, you probably think of one word: "Smart."

You know he went to Stanford. You know he was featured in the New York Times crossword documentary, Word Play. But his intelligence comes over in more subtle ways. His crazy pitches like the knuckle curve. The way he worked over hitters without having to overwhelm them. The way he gave an interview.

Mussina was a member of the "smart" pitchers club. The guys like Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling and Jamie Moyer. Guys without, say, the searing fastball or the ridiculous curve that no matter the count, the batter, the situation that they can get the batter to swing and miss. Not that they didn't have righteous pitches. They did. But they tried to use their tools in correlation with the count, batter, etc. to get an out more efficiently and faster than other pitchers.

I always liked Moose. Well, let's say I really liked him as an Oriole and liked him less as a Yankee. Nevertheless, I rooted for the guy and I was ecstatic to see him get 20 wins (finally) in 2008.

Mussina played 18 seasons. He had double-digit wins in all of them except his rookie year, when he had only 12 starts. He had 19 wins twice and 18 wins thrice. Sitting at 270 wins, I have no doubt he'd hit 300 in two years. He had 11 years of 200+ innings, with a total of 3,562 for his career.

Like his win total, should he play another two years, he'd hit 3,000 strikeouts. His control was impeccable. Typically top 5 in the league for K-BB ratio.

He won seven Gold Gloves and was selected to five All-Star games.

When the lights were brightest, he brought his best. In 139 postseason innings, he had 145 strikeouts, 33 walks and a 3.42 ERA. But he did not win in either of the two World Series he played in.

I doubt very much if he will be voted into the Hall of Fame and that's OK. He had a good career. He won zero Cy Young Awards. No World Series. No major awards or accolades. No major pitching benchmarks reached.

Again, two more seasons and he gets 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts.

Instead, he rather be with his family.

Who needs Cooperstown anyway?