Earlier, the Class of 2015 for the baseball Hall of Fame was announced. Some guys were no-brainers like Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson, and I was pleased to see John Smoltz make it on his first try; I always assumed he’d get in, but it would be some convoluted debate on why he shouldn’t get in on his first year, but whatever.
Ultimately, the train of thought led to general happiness that John Smoltz got in, since while at the peak of my Braves fandom, John Smoltz was still the heart and the ace of the Braves pitching squad, but also looking at both sides of the debate, namely the statistics.
Long story short, I don’t hide the fact that I think baseball’s HOF criteria and process is pretty flawed and nothing is as easy as it should be as long as a bunch of entitled writers hold the keys to the Hall, so admittedly, I was a little bit surprised to see Smoltz make it on his first year. What this says to me is that the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) really love a good narrative, and really put a tremendous amount of weight into the comparison to Dennis Eckersley, another Hall of Fame pitcher.
The narrative would be that with Smoltz inducted, the trifecta of the legendary Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz troika of Braves pitchers are all ensconced in the Hall of Fame as first ballot inductions. This was the dream that was dreamt by the franchise and all its fans, during the 90s when the trio won 369 games, took five Cy Young awards and won a World Championship together. This was the dream that was dreamt six years ago, when Greg Maddux retired, then Tom Glavine retired, and then a year later when John Smoltz announced his retirement. And this was the dream that was dreamt last year, when Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine were inducted in their first ballot, and everyone would have to wait one more year for John Smoltz’s eligibility to kick in. And now it’s been fulfilled.
I say the BBWAA also put a ton of weight into the comparison to Dennis Eckersley as well, because John Smoltz amassed a nice pile of saves in the three years he served as the Braves’ closer, just as Eckersley went from being a starting pitcher to a closer before him. Usually, relief pitchers in general aren’t given enough credit by the Hall of Fame, which is no more obvious than the fact that guys like Lee Smith is not in the Hall of Fame, despite the fact that he was the all-time leader in saves for quite some time, before he was ultimately passed by both Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera, both of whom will probably face a good bit of debate being “just” relief pitchers.
The saves are a bit point of contention to what spurred this train of thought, because aside from the narrative of Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz, the BBWAA still needed to justify John Smoltz’s induction on the first try. Now Smoltz wasn’t necessarily lacking in the wins department, as he retired with 213 wins in his own right, but I can’t believe that 154 saves on top of that is enough to justify ignoring guys like Curt Schilling who won more championships than Smoltz did with a comparable amount of wins, and Mike Mussina, who had 270 wins in his own illustrious career.
Like I believe, the BBWAA loves a good narrative, and although they’ll never admit it, the narrative probably had more to do with John Smoltz’s induction over anything else. However, ultimately, what it all boiled down to in the end that despite the fact that I’m pleased with Smoltz’s induction, I can’t help but feel bad for a guy like Mike Mussina, who is probably about as deserving as John Smoltz was, but without narrative, without a side of saves, and without any rings, simply doesn’t get the BBWAA’s subjective favor in the end.
The most incredible thing about that list of shortcomings is the fact that Mike Mussina never won any championships. Didn’t he play for the Yankees? He sure did. But he couldn’t have possibly played for the Yankees at any worse stretch than the one he played in, and that’s pretty much exactly why it must suck to be Mike Mussina.
And this might be one of the longest introductions I’ve ever written in my brog.
I’ve always kind of been a Mike Mussina fan. Back when I was a casual baseball fan, I was kind of a casual fan of the Baltimore Orioles, because growing up where I did, there was no Nationals yet, I hadn’t moved to Atlanta and become a Braves fan, and the O’s were literally the only show in town. Not to mention it didn’t hurt that they had Cal Ripken, Jr. playing for them then, who is basically Baseball Jesus, the Ironman and one of the best players in history all wrapped into one.
But ultimately, one player does a team not make, and it wasn’t until I was watching some playoff games in the late 90s, did the name Mike Mussina make its way onto my radar. Notably a game against the Cleveland Indians in which Moose struck out 15 Indians in a lineup that had guys like Sandy Alomar, Manny Ramirez and David Justice.
Ultimately, I always remembered Mussina, when I couldn’t remember anyone else on the O’s back then, and I didn’t quite grasp baseball politicking and why guys left teams and so forth, not to mention there was a time in which I was more of an anime dork to pay attention to sports as much, so it flew under my radar that Mike Mussina had left the O’s following 2000, and joined the Yankees.
Even when I started watching baseball again, and when I was actually surprised when I saw Mike Mussina taking the hill for the Yankees, I couldn’t help but wonder what went through his head whenever he was pitching. It didn’t help that FOX was super into zooming into the face of the pitcher before every single pitch, so overthinkers like me would always try to inject narrative into facial expressions, and I would always believe that deep in that complex mind of Mike Mussina, he didn’t feel like he belonged on the Yankees, although I would later learn that it was pretty much the O’s or the Yankees no matter what, because he always wanted to be close to his hometown in Montoursville, PA in the offseasons.
Whenever I thought about Mike Mussina, I always thought about a guy that was always an awesome pitcher, but someone who just always kind of fell short. Often times, it wasn’t always by any fault of his, because pitchers only pitch once every few days, and the team’s still got to go out and win the games when they’re not pitching. Like falling short of the World Series numerous times with the O’s, all the times he was close to no-hitters, and never getting one, and the nagging subjective criteria of the 20-win season that literally eluded him until his very last season in 2008, when he won game #20 on the last game of the season.
But I actually had to stop and think and ultimately look up numbers to discover that in spite of his eight year tenure with the Yankees, those were all the years in which the Yankees did not win a championship. Meaning that even in spite of all the money and all the regular season successes, even with the Yankees, Moose still couldn’t win a ring.
What makes things worse, and justifies why it sucks to be Mike Mussina is that the Yankees won the World Series in 2000, the year before Mike Mussina, and in 2009, after Mike Mussina had declared retirement, the Yankees finally broke through and won the World Series then.
Ultimately, I say that it sucks to be Mike Mussina, because in spite of the fact that pitchers can’t always control whether or not they win championship rings, the oldhat and narrative-loving goons of the BBWAA still hold it against a player for not having any rings under their belt. With that in mind, there’s a very good chance that in spite of having 270 wins, and being one of the better pitchers of all-time, a guy like Mike Mussina may never make it into the Hall of Fame, while guys like John Smoltz and probably eventually Curt Schilling do, thanks to circumstances not necessarily always in their control.
