Thursday, November 20, 2008

Moose Calls it quits

One of my favorite baseball players has called it quits. Just a few months after he won 20 games for the first time in his career Mike Mussina officially retired yesterday. Moose was a class act. For most of his 10 years with the Orioles I covered him and even when he went to the Yankees after the 2000 season I still made sure I stopped into the Yanks locker room to talk with him. Not too many major league baseball players graduated Stanford in 3 and a half years. When you did an interview with Moose you often asked your question and he would pause and actually think about the questions instead of giving the typical jock speak. Heck Mike is the only big leaguer I ever saw doing the New York Times crossword puzzle at his locker every day. I could go on with the stories. But I would also like to make the case for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Moose deserves to be in Cooperstown and here is why. His stats 270 wins, a .638 winning percentage, 2818 strikeouts and a 3.68 ERA are comparable to at least 10 current Hall of Fame pitchers. Look it up Moose stacks up against Bunning, Hubble, Catfish Hunter, Juan Marichal, Jim Palmer, Robin Roberts, Don Drysdale, Bob Feller and Bob Lemon. The knock against Moose was he didn't win 20 games--until this past season--and didn't win a Cy Young award. I agree the no Cy Young is important but if you go back and look numerous times he was in contention for Cy Young awards. I don't have a vote for Hall of Fame but I know a few baseball writers that do and hope they give him due consideration in 5 years when he becomes eligible.

Picks

#7 Penn State over #17 Michigan State (Sat 2pm on WSBA)
Ravens trip Eagles (Sun 12:30 on WSBA)
Redskins beat the Seahawks
#22 Maryland beat Florida State
#2 Texas Tech beats #5 Oklahoma State


Last Week 4-1 Overall 37-23

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