Tireball.com

“I never got a chance to win a world championship. I never got a chance to win a Cy Young Award. On the last day of my career I finally won 20 games. There’s some nice things I’ve been able to do. I think I’ve done as much as I’m capable of doing at the level I wanted to do it at. If it creates a good argument, all the better.”

Of course the argument Mussina mentions is that for induction into Cooperstown. Mussina spent all 18 years of his career pitching in the AL East, 10 for the Orioles, 8 for the Yankees.

Mussina made his living with his knuckle-curve, a standard curve ball, thrown with one or more of the index or mean fingers bent. According to practitioners, this gives them a better grip on the ball and allows for tighter spin and greater movement. On Thursday he threw one more stating that while the Yankees and everyone else in baseball waited the last three weeks to see if he was going to return, he had known since the beginning of Spring Training that 2008 would be his last season in the big leagues.

He entered 2008 with 250 wins and lost three of his first four decisions in April. It was written in more then one place that Mussina had reached the end of his career.

After never taking the Yankees to a World Series championship fans began to believe his best days were in fact as an Oriole. Suddenly things changed though. Mussina picked up wins in his next five starts. By the middle of June after a victory in Houston Mussina was 10-4 with a 3.87 ERA.

Things remained hot for Mussina over the summer and in the last start of his career Mussina defeated the Boston Red Sox to reach 20 wins for the first time in his career.

At the end of the year his record 20-9, his ERA 3.37. Another 200 innings pitched, his seventh gold glove awaited.

As Yahoo Sports writer Tim Brown said.

Mussina simply did his work, took the ball when they gave it to him, tried to win, and tried to show the young men who came through how. They might not have his self-taught knuckle-curve, but they could copy his preparation. They might not have his experiences, but they could steal the results of them.

That was his season. And he had a wonderful time of it, much better, perhaps, than if there was anything beyond the rest of his life waiting at the other end of it. There would be no free agency. There would be no new negotiations with the Yankees, who would have wanted him back. There would be no new cities, if those went bad.

“It was like the last year of high school,” Mussina said. “You know it’s going to end and you just enjoy the ride.”

With 270 career wins, a 3.68 ERA, and 11 seasons of 200 or more innings Mussina proved to be more then just your ordinary ace. He never stood out for a Cy Young season, he was never the vocalist. Instead he let his performance on the field do it for him.

It’s going to be a little odd not hearing Mussina’s name anymore. On more then one occasion I sent him baseball cards to be signed, each time I got them back. The neatly written signature not normaly associated with a big leaguer each time highlighted the card.

It’s also a bit of a downer that he didn’t give it a shot for 300 wins but Mussina instead kept his promise. One he made to his family last January.