Bent Corner

Yankees 40-year old pitcher Mike Mussina is calling it quits after achieving his first 20 win season in 18 years of playing Major League Baseball. Mussina was an Orioles first round draft pick in 1990. He played for the Orioles from 1991 to 2000, and then went on to sign a free agent contract with the rival Yankees.

The big knock on Mussina – if there was one — was that he never registered a 20- win season. He had two back to back 19-win seasons while playing for the Orioles as well as two 18-win seasons. With that said, he was almost always the number one pitcher on his team for much of his entire career.

I happened to be in Camden Yards the night he scored his 100 win. I don’t remember the date, but it was an interleague game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Baltimore Orioles. I remember there being more Philly fans in attendance then Oriole fans. That’s a trend that only worsened as the Orioles worsened. Not just with the Phillies, but with the Yankees and the Red Sox too.

The most exciting sporting event I have ever seen in my life was a game between the Cleveland Indians and the Baltimore Orioles. Mussina was on the mound. He had a perfect game going into the ninth inning. Indians catcher Sandy Alomar then got a one-out single to break up the perfect game.

If Mike Mussina somehow doesn’t end up in the Baseball Hall of Fame, it will be a crime against humanity. He finishes his career with a 270-153 record and 3.68 ERA. He has 2,813 career strikeouts and just won his seventh Gold Glove award. He spent his entire career in the offense happy AL East and 10 years of that pitching in hitter-friendly Camden Yards. He’s also a total class act. That shouldn’t matter much when it comes to Hall of Fame consideration, but it counts a lot in my book.

Not that I even have a book.

The New York Yankees have signed ex-Oriole prospect Sir Sidney Ponson to a minor league contract.

The guy is such an asshole that the Texas Rangers recently released him from the team even though he had a 4-1 record and a 3.88 ERA so far this season. What’s funny about this, is this is his second time with the Yankees. He pitched briefly for them in 2006. The Yankees already know the level of trouble he can bring to the clubhouse.

They go and sign him anyway. Ha-ha!

Link

It turns out that when Miguel Tejada signed his first professional baseball contract in the Dominican Republic, he was 19 and not 17 as he claimed. He’s been lying about his age ever since.

At least to Major League Baseball. According to the Houston Astros — the team he plays for now — his green card, his driver’s license, and everything else that he uses in his personal life shows that he was born in 1974. Everything in baseball shows that he was born in 1976.

The thing I don’t understand is how his correct date of birth appears on his green card, yet none of the teams he has played for knew his correct age. Not only do they have to look at his green card, I believe they have to retain a copy of his green card.

Why didn’t anyone look at it?

If he has been lying about his age, what else could he be lying about? In 2005 Rafael Palmeiro was suspended for ten days after testing positive for steroids. Acording to ESPN, Palmeiro implicated Miguel Tejada to baseball’s arbitration panel saying that Tejada was responsible for his positive test. Palmeiro claimed the only thing he had ever injected himself with was vitamin B12 supplied by Tejada.

Could the B12 have really been the potent anabolic steroid stanozolol?

I’ll be totally honest and admit that I never liked Miguel Tejada. He always seemed too fat to be a shortstop. I thought he swung at the first pitch too much. He had decent numbers. I guess. I don’t think he was worth what the Orioles were paying him, but what else is new? I was glad when they traded him to the Astros.

Today was Opening Day in Major League Baseball. That is, if you don’t count the game that took place last night in Washington D.C. between the Nationals and the Braves or the two games that happened last week in Japan between The A’s and the Red Sox.

Those two games counted as regular season games. Go figure.

The Red Sox then came back to the land of the Big BX and played the Dodgers this past weekend in Los Angeles in a “spring training” exhibition game in the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of 115,300 fans. The last time I sat in the Coliseum to watch a Raiders game there was only about 45,000 people there and a good many of them for Browns fans.

When I got off work I turned on the Orioles game on my XM Radio. They were beating the Rays 2 - 0. By the time I got home, the Orioles were losing 6 - 2. Good to see that O’s are back in true Oriole form.

They haven’t racked up 10 losing seasons in a row by accident. Could this year make eleven? Only time will tell.