Baseball - At Last ! (2 Viewers)

Mussina was a class act (despite leaving the O's for NY) and his move to retire on top is completely in character. He did not have anything to prove and the 300 win mark obviously meant nothing to him. He has a family and that is his life, not baseball. I applaude his decision to go out a winner. Too many hang on too long and refuse to admit the decline of their skills. I will miss him along with Maddux and Schilling, who also retired this off season. -- lancer
 
Moose was and will always be a class act; I saw him come within two outs of pitching a perfect game at Fenway several years ago.

I remember when he hit the free agent market, it was between the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Yankees backed up a dump truck full of money and landed him (what a shock), so the Sox had to "settle" for Manny Ramirez.

Two World Series titles later, looks like they got the better of that deal.

I'll always remember Moose as the guy who came into game 7 of the 2003 ALCS in relief of The Texas Con Man who in one of the biggest games of his life couldn't get out of the third inning vs the Sox; Moose pitched lights out, allowing the Yankees to claw their way back and win the game on a walk off home run by the immortal Aaron Boone.
 
Louis Badolato said:
You're correct, he is pitching for San Francisco. He has more than 290 wins at present, so I expect he will get his 300th this year.

Mike Mussina is another weird baseball story. Here is a guy that is pretty much always a solid number 2 pitcher, winning between 15-19 every year, but he can never win twenty games, despite playing on Yankees teams that make the playoffs every year, and win two pennants. Then in his last season, when everyone thinks he is over the hill and won't do anything, he wins 20 games, bringing his career total to 270. All he needs is two more 15 win seasons (something he did for an AL record number of seasons in a row) and he will go to the hall of fame with 300 victories. Instead, inexplicably, he retires. His retirement after a 20 win season was almost as surprising as his fianlly winning 20 games.
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Mike Mussina

Came up through the Orioles Organization and was great pitcher - I have his rookie cards ! He was good guy - met him once - even though he was a Yankee in the end :eek:
 
The Texas Con Man? He NEVER took steroids either. LOL! I think HOF is sweating. -- lancer
 
lancer said:
Mussina was a class act (despite leaving the O's for NY) and his move to retire on top is completely in character. He did not have anything to prove and the 300 win mark obviously meant nothing to him. He has a family and that is his life, not baseball. I applaude his decision to go out a winner. Too many hang on too long and refuse to admit the decline of their skills. I will miss him along with Maddux and Schilling, who also retired this off season. -- lancer
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I am not trying to insinuate that the Moose was not a class act, or that he didn't retire on top, I'm just saying not many people would hang it up when two more seasons at his average number of wins would have put him in the hall of fame (not to mention the millions of dollars the Yankees would have paid him to get number 300 over the next two seasons, and the fact that the reloaded Yankees have a very good chance of finally winning it all). If the Yankees do pull it off this year, he will have missed a Title by a year on either end of his Yankee tenure - the Yanks won the Subway Series in 2000, then lost in game 7 when Mariano was finally human and blew a save during Moose's first season as a Yankee.
 
Louis Badolato said:
I am not trying to insinuate that the Moose was not a class act, or that he didn't retire on top, I'm just saying not many people would hang it up when two more seasons at his average number of wins would have put him in the hall of fame (not to mention the millions of dollars the Yankees would have paid him to get number 300 over the next two seasons, and the fact that the reloaded Yankees have a very good chance of finally winning it all). If the Yankees do pull it off this year, he will have missed a Title by a year on either end of his Yankee tenure - the Yanks won the Subway Series in 2000, then lost in game 7 when Mariano was finally human and blew a save during Moose's first season as a Yankee.
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Louis, I meant no offence, just awkward wording. Moose does have odd timing pulling the pin, but that's him. I wish he had stuck it out to 300 and a WS title. Still, going out on a 20 win season is a great way to say bye. -- Al
 
This just in, a sad day for all of us Phillies fans:

http://philadelphia.phillies.mlb.co...t_id=4249036&vkey=news_phi&fext=.jsp&c_id=phi

Harry Kalas collapsed earlier this afternoon, during preparations for the broadcast of today's Phillies-Nationals game, and was declared dead at George Washington Hospital.

I know I'll miss him. But at least he got to broadcast one more Phils World Series before he passed, and he died working at what he loved to do, and what he did so well.

Now the broadcast team of Harry and Whitey will be reunited.
 
"The Texas Con Man? He NEVER took steroids either. LOL! I think HOF is sweating. -- lancer'

He signed a huge four year contract with the Red Sox in the 90's and was barely a 500 pitcher over the life of the contract,left after that because he wanted to be closer to "home", ie, Texas and he ends up signing with Toronto (closer to home? I guess he flunked geography in high school), hooked up with Brian Macnamy, began juicing and won back to back Cy Youngs and ended up with the Yankees.

There is no way he gets in the Hall, he cheated his way to all of his records....................
 
I see Randy "I'm going to win 300 if it kills me" Johnson got lit up again yesterday. Now 0-2 on season. Still needs only 5 wins if my memory is correct. Tough to watch. Isn't he an AARP member? -- lancer
 
Very Ugly Day - Yesterday :mad:

The Nationals have effectively crushed my baseball spirit with this terrible Opening Day. Ugh - I guess we are about to become the "New Cubs" of the National League - if not all of Baseball. :rolleyes:

Times like these is when you ask yourself - why do I have tickets ?

Anyway - I will stick with my NATS - they showed great promise with the offense - but, once again it was PITCHING which let us down. :(

All I can say it is going to be a long season.
 
One of the good things about living in Maryland is we can root for 2 teams. The O's are playing well (it is not August, yet) and the Nat's have to win a game eventually (I'd almost bet my life on it). So chin up, the season is still young. On a related topic, how long will Acta last and what would it take to get him canned? -- lancer
 
During my first visit to the States, I went to see the New York Mets at Shay stadium. It was a really fun day out, lots of friendly people and chilli dogs. Is it true your baseball is derived from the British game called 'Rounders', brought across with the Mayflower?
 
Evzone,

Allegedly, the game derived from Rounders although conventional wisdom holds that Abner Doubleday invented the game at Cooperstown, New York, where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located.

BTW, Shea Stadium no longer exists. On Monday, the Mets inaugurated Citifield, next to the old Shea Stadium and in typical Mets fashion lost to the opposition. That makes them 0-3 first time in playing in home stadiums. They lost at the old Polo Grounds in 1962 (their debut season), in 1964, when they opened Shea, and now in 2009, when they opened Citifield.
 
Weird:
Investigators believe legendary pitcher Mark Fidrych, who was found dead at his Massachusetts farm on Monday, was asphyxiated when his clothes became tangled in the moving parts of his truck’s engine, according to the Worcester County district attorney.

Fidrych, 54, was found underneath a 10-wheel Mack dump truck at his property in Northborough. An autopsy performed this week found that Fidrych died of accidental asphyxia by suffocation when his clothes were pulled into the truck’s power takeoff shaft, according to district attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.
 
lancer said:
One of the good things about living in Maryland is we can root for 2 teams. The O's are playing well (it is not August, yet) and the Nat's have to win a game eventually (I'd almost bet my life on it). So chin up, the season is still young. On a related topic, how long will Acta last and what would it take to get him canned? -- lancer
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Lancer, this is interesting can you actually support two teams from roughly the same area? Football (soccer) is so tribal in England.
 
Evzone said:
Lancer, this is interesting can you actually support two teams from roughly the same area? Football (soccer) is so tribal in England.
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Baseball can be, too, but I think we move around a lot more than the Brits might. Also, The Orioles and the Nationals are in different leagues, the O's are in the American League, and the Nationals are in the National League (just a coincidence about the names).

DC and Baltimore both have their own football teams, too, but there are so many people in the area from Baltimore and the head of the Chesapeake Bay, down through Washington and into NE Virginia, that they can support all the franchises.

Hard to say which area supports which teams and sports better. DC had a baseball team, back in the day, the Senators. In 1960, they moved to Minnesota to become the Twins, and Washington was awarded a new franchise in an expansion. But that franchise chose to move to Texas after the 1971, becoming the Texas Rangers. It was only when the Montreal Expos were close to folding, that MLB sanctioned returning a franchise to the national capital. On the other hand, Baltimore picked up its baseball team from St Loius, where they were the St Louis Browns, but they lost their original football club, the Colts, who moved to Indianapolis. But Baltimore was later awarded a new franchise in an expansion, the Ravens.

At one time, New York City hosted 3 baseball teams (The Yankees, the Giants and the Dodgers), and St Louis, Philadelphia and Boston each had 2 (the Cardinals and the Browns, the Athletics and the Phillies, and the Red Sox and the Braves, respectively).

Prost!
Brad
 
Evzone said:
Lancer, this is interesting can you actually support two teams from roughly the same area? Football (soccer) is so tribal in England.
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Hello Evzone. As Baron pointed out , the two teams I follow are in different leagues. This eliminates most rooting conflicts as the two never play each other with the exception of a possible inter-league series of six games (out of a season of 162 games). They could meet in the World Series (not likely as neither team is very good) and this might cause a crisis of conscience but I'll take the chance. I like to follow my teams but it has been a long time since I felt like breaking something whenever they lose. If I did that, I wouldn't have anything left because, as I said, neither team is very good. Not worth getting upset. -- lancer
 
Thank you Lancer. Out of interest why is it called the World Series, if the teams competing in the competition are all from America?
 
Evzone said:
Thank you Lancer. Out of interest why is it called the World Series, if the teams competing in the competition are all from America?
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The best answer I can come up with is that the term World Series was coined way back in the early 20th century (think 1910's) when the U.S. was the only country playing baseball and would remain so for years. Thus the World Series, while only a U.S. tournament, was the only one anywhere. Now-a-days baseball is played all around the world but no arrangement exsists (as in World Cup Soccer) to play for a professional title, for whatever reason.
Tradition dictates the title "World Series" and it is unlikely to change anytime soon, if ever. -- lancer
 
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