Throwback Thursday: Mike Mussina

This past Sunday, Mike Mussina made an appearance at Camden Yards.  A quasi-cheer registered through Camden Yards and Twitter was out in force questioning him:

Mike Mussina has held in contempt for leaving the Orioles after the 2000 season for the hated team in New York that should not be named.  However, dismissing Mussina by not cheering him, calling him a bum, or a sellout is of great issue to me.  For this Throwback Thursday, I’d like to travel back to when Moose was pitching in Baltimore.  Perhaps I should go to one of the great seasons in Baltimore in ’96 or ’97.  However, I’m going to go to where the sun was setting and the darkness was rising.

The year is 2000 and the Orioles are mired in a stretch in September of seeing the schedule through to the end.  We remember many of those years Orioles fans and aren’t we glad that for the past two years we have had competitive baseball to cheer on.  But I digress from the story.  The Orioles traveled to Fenway Park on September 24th to play the  Boston Red Sox who were in 3rd place and 7GB of the Yankees.  Boston is in desperate shape hanging on to a slim chance for a Wild Card berth entering into the last week.  The Red Sox send one of their top prospects to the mound to take it to the lowly Orioles who are 68-87.

The game evolves into a true pitcher’s duel with Mussina playing for nothing, but himself.  A quick look at the score card would give a certain ho-hum appearance to it.  However look closely at the stat line for Mussina for the game:

[table id=14 /]

Mussina goes 7 IP with no walks or runs allowed.  In addition, he posts an incredible 19.29 K/9 for the game with 15 SO for the game.  Mussina came out of the game with only 106 pitches.  Mussina pitched to 120 pitches several times that season and in April to 137 pitches.  Mussina easily could have gone a complete game and competed for the K record and a place in history.  However, we as Orioles fans aren’t going to remember this game.  In fact, I doubt anyone would really care in the end.  The game was meaningless for the Orioles and Baltimore fans would have already have departed for Ravens season by this point.

However if we truly look back at the performances by Mussina for the Orioles in good and bad seasons, we should recognize him as one of the greatest pitchers for the Orioles of all-time and at least for my generation.