Mike Mussina can whittle his illustrious career down into one word. Almost. Four times in his career, he’s almost thrown a perfect game. In four different seasons, he’s almost won 20 games. He’s almost won a Cy Young, finishing in the top six eight separate times. And, perhaps the most frustrating to Mussina, he’s almost…
Tag: Baseball
No longer a one-pitch wonder, Wang dominates Indians
It was on this very same field last October, Cleveland’s Progressive Field, when the sinker wasn’t sinking, and Chien Ming Wang was helpless as the Yankees endured another early exit from the playoffs. In just 5 2/3 innings of work, he allowed 12 runs and set off a cascade of arguments into whether Wang was…
Mitchell Report: Much Ado About Nothing
One year of investigating and $30 million later, and the much anticipated Mitchell Report was much ado about nothing. The report, released last week, named roughly 80 players – some of them at the forefront of baseball – linking these athletes to performance enhancing drugs. It was worth a day-long special on ESPN and grabbed…
For Bonds, apologizing would go a long way
If I’ve learned anything about Barry Bonds over the course of his career, and especially in recent years, is that you can never fully give up on him. Bonds, perhaps the more polarizing figure in sports in recent years, seems to thrive in conflict, turning boos into awe when sending a pitch into orbit. When…
Clemens returns, but to what result?
A die-hard Red Sox fan and a former co-host on my sports talk show didn’t seem to mind losing the Roger Clemens sweepstakes yesterday. I posed the question, “See the Yankees got the Rocket? Are you [angry]?” “Not at all,” he answered. After all, it was the Yankees, not the Red Sox, who were trailing…
Four Score and Two Days Ago, Dodgers Make History
Dodger fans, at least, as the perception goes, are renowed for arriving in the second inning and leaving in the eighth. Initially, Monday night at Dodger Stadium was no different from the normal pattern. Only the most die-hard of fans were on hand in the ninth inning, when the Dodgers were down four runs. But,…
Yankees No Longer Automatic
Is it October? From the way Yankees manger Joe Torre sounded, any Yankee fan couldve easily mistaken it for something hed say in the playoffs. “If you don’t pitch, it’s such a helpless feeling,” Torre said following Tuesday night’s 19-1 loss. “We certainly are better than this and we need to be better than this…
Sheffield swings a thunderous bat
Gary Sheffield is the latest name in a line of superstars who had struggled initially in a Yankees uniform before returning to form. Jason Giambi hovered around the Mendoza line in 2002, his first year with the Yankees until mid-May when he picked his hitting up and finished with MVP numbers. Alex Rodriguez, the reigning…
Vazquez has makeup of winner
If you found your way into the Yankees’ clubhouse last year, inevitably, you’d end up near pitcher David Wells. It was hard to miss the round, loud-mouth pitcher whose locker stood in the middle of Legends Field Yankee Clubhouse. Wells is gone, and his locker and number (33) now belong to Javier Vazquez. For many…