Monday, August 27, 2007
For love of the Moose?
I’m sure everyone reads the handsome Mr. Abraham daily, but this small post about Mike Mussina’s start tonight is great little piece of writing.
would imagine Mike Mussina has accomplished more as a baseball player than he ever hoped as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania.
He got a scholarship to Stanford, was a first-round draft pick and has made millions playing the game for two high-profile teams. At the very least, he is a player who Hall of Fame voters will have to give serious consideration to given his 247 wins, 2,648 strikeouts and 3.69 ERA in what will come to be known as the steroids era.
But none of that matters tonight.
For the first time since his rookie season in Baltimore in 1991, Mussina will be pitching to prove that he deserves another chance five days later.
Mustering up the arrogance of an elite athlete, he stood in the clubhouse the other day and mocked the idea of his being replaced. But if Mussina can’t get guys out, the Yankees owe it to themselves to see if somebody else can. Even if that somebody else is Kei Igawa or some kid.
[snip]
[H]e is a pitcher in the twilight, forced to figure out who he is and what he can do to get 18 hitters out.
The whole entry reminded me of this silly, guilty pleasure sports chick flick - “For Love of the Game.” It starred Kevin Costner (Natch.) and a bunch of nobodies, but the basic story was an aging pitcher (Costner) pitching for the Tigers against the Yankees in what might be his last start, throws a perfect game. Oh, and there’s some relationship nonsense too. But Vin Scully does the play-by-play for the game and has some crackerjack scripted lines that probably apply to Moose tonight.
After 19 years in the big leagues, 40 year old Billy Chapel 38-year-old Mike Mussina has trudged to the mound for over 4000 3,300 innings. But tonight, he’s pitching against time, he’s pitching against the future, against age, against ending. Tonight, he will make the fateful walk to the loneliest spot in the world, the pitching mound at Yankee Stadium Comerica Park, to push the sun back into the sky and give us one more day of summer.
I’ve always like the Moose, maybe more than most Yankee fans, my father in particular - who clings to the notion that Moose is prone to “spitting the bit” in big spots.
I don’t know if this pitcher still exists, but if he’s in there somewhere, now would be a good time to conjure him up.
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