Jim Palmer, the greatest pitcher the Orioles ever produced, spent his entire career in Baltimore, won three Cy Young awards and three World Series rings, ended up in the Hall of Fame and remains tied to the team as an insightful broadcaster.
Mike Mussina, the second-greatest pitcher ever produced by the Orioles, spent the first half of his career in Baltimore, and has been with the Yankees ever since. He has never won a Cy Young or a World Series, and has failed to produced a single, 20-win season, something Palmer managed eight times during an incredible nine-year run.
Recommended Stories
And both pitchers are about to be linked by a number.
With his next win, Mussina will tie Palmer with his 268th career victory.
A fair amount of Orioles fans, still angry with the way Mussina left town after the 2000 season — for New York, of all places — will not be celebrating Moose’s moment. They are probably wincing at such a comparison to a Baltimore icon such as Palmer.
I have come to praise Moose, not to bury him.
To those Mussina haters, get over it. Your ire should be directed at Orioles management for failing to exercise sound business judgment. Ask owner Peter Angelos why he avoided any serious effort to lock up Mussina with a contract extension while there was plenty of time to do so, while Mussina sounded open to the notion of finishing his career in Baltimore.
Mussina spent most of the 1990s pitching for a mediocre-to-bad team that often lacked a couple of intimidating bats. He worked in the hitter-friendly Oriole Park at Camden Yards, not to mention other bandboxes that sprang up in the American League during the decade. And Moose prospered during the rapid rise of the steroid era.
How do you not look back and marvel at what Moose did here?
A year after getting drafted out of Stanford in 1990, Mussina arrived in the big leagues late in the 1991 season, and all of those big-time tools were on display.
His economic windup recalled Greg Maddux.
His excellent control, refusal to give in to hitters by allowing walks, and that nasty competitive streak made you think of Palmer.
Mussina ate up opposing hitters with the precision of an artist.
When you multiplied his arsenal of pitches with his many release angles and his constant changing of speed and location, it seemed as if Moose harnessed about 25 different options. To watch him navigate through a lineup was to watch a computer working with one hell of a right arm.
I ask those disgruntled Orioles fans, while Mussina was winning 147 games in nine-plus years in Baltimore, while he was going to five All-Star games, winning four Gold Gloves and constantly finishing among the league’s top 10 in wins, ERA, strikeouts, innings and fewest walks, on what day did he ever cheat his team?
All Moose did was show up every year for spring training in tip-top shape, ready to work, ready to carry a short-handed team as far as an ace pitcher could.
When he decided to sign with New York in the fall of 2000, who could blame him?
Some will say he took the big money and ran. As an Orioles fan, I hated the day Moose became the Yankees’ property, but had he not taken a high-percentage shot at winning a World Series in New York, I would have wondered if the guy who earned an economics degree in three years at Stanford had popped a screw loose upstairs.
Surely, there are Baltimore fans that have delighted at the Yankees’ failure to win it all — despite seven straight playoff trips — since Mussina arrived. Surely, there are Orioles faithful who have enjoyed watching Mussina struggle to stay healthy in recent years.
And now, they’re giddy about a Yankee squad that will miss the postseason this fall, while Mussina, at the age of 39 with a 17-8 record, could end up winning 20 games and that elusive Cy Young.
Mussina is probably a long shot to make the Hall of Fame. He may never win that ring. Many Oriole fans will refuse to mention him in the same breath as Palmer.
All I know is Moose is a pro’s pro, and he’s about to pull up next to and pass Palmer.
That’s good enough for me.
[email protected].
