In what may be his final game as a New York Yankee and a professional baseball player, Mike Mussina did something he hasn’t done before:
BOSTON — Mike Mussina is not a dreamer. He knows he has just spun a season unlikely to repeat itself. He is too much of a realist to believe that finally winning 20 games — as he did Sunday on the last day of his 18th season in the majors — means he can keep defying age until he reaches 300 wins.
There is a very real chance that Mussina pitched the last game of his career when he beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-2, with six shutout innings at Fenway Park. His contract has expired, his 40th birthday awaits in December, and his family wants him to come home to Montoursville, Pa., for good.
“I’ve been envious of every guy who’s retired since I’ve been playing — you’ve done what you wanted to do, and I still have to grind it out, that kind of thing,” Mussina said, enjoying a soda in the manager’s office between games of a doubleheader. “You get to go home and relax, and you’ve played the game as long as you’ve chosen to play it. I’ve felt good for every one of them.”
Mussina just may join them, though he would be the only pitcher in the last 100 years to voluntarily retire after a 20-win season. Elbow pain ended Sandy Koufax’s career after he won 27 in 1966, and two Chicago White Sox players were barred in 1920 for conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series.
It may be just like Mussina to walk away healthy and on top. He is not like other players, anyway. He graduated from Stanford with an economics degree in three and a half years. He almost never takes a vacation. He reads novels and collects tractors and vintage cars.
Fortune never pulled Mussina from his hometown. He displays no family photographs in his locker, yet he always seems pulled toward Pennsylvania.
“For him, it’s not about selfish goals, or ‘Where am I going to end up in the history of the game?’ ” Manager Joe Girardi said. “If he walks away, it’s because he thinks it’s time to be with his family.”
Does Girardi think Mussina is capable of doing that?
“Oh yeah, I do,” he said. “I think Moose is capable of doing that, because I know what type of husband and father he is. Will he do it? I don’t know.”
Mussina needs 30 victories for 300, and he says that if he pitches one more season, he would have to pitch three to reach the mark. That is the decision he faces when he gets home.
“If the situation isn’t ideal for me, or it’s better to be coaching Little League, then it would be time,” he said.
Whatever choice he makes, Mussina has done a great job. Going out on a high note would be the perfect ending to a classy career.
