from The Star-Ledger
04/06/01
BY DAN GRAZIANO STAR-LEDGER STAFF
NEW YORK -- Mike Mussina left his Westchester County home at 10 a.m. yesterday, in the passenger seat of his friend Dennis' light-bronze Corvette with the Maryland plates and its black top up.
They hit traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway, so the car didn't pull up to the Yankee Stadium press gate until 10:42. Mussina, dressed in a blue baseball cap, a long-sleeved white T-shirt and blue sweat pants with a pager dangling from the front of the waistband, got out of the car, walked past about 30 screaming fans, and entered the Stadium for his first official day's work as a Yankee.
As Dennis parked the car, the Yankees' skinny new right-handed pitcher walked down the stairs, through the hallway and into the Yankees clubhouse. A security guard, Alonzo Johnson, followed him.
"Excuse me," Johnson called. "Excuse me."
Having failed to recognize Mussina, Johnson wanted to check his press pass. But assistant trainer Steve Donohue stopped the guard and told him it was okay. Mussina turned, and with a little smirk, told Johnson, "I'm pitching today."
Was he ever.
Four and a half hours later, after Mussina pitched 72/3 scoreless innings in the Yankees' skintight 1-0 victory over the Kansas City Royals, there wasn't anybody in the ballpark who didn't know the new guy.
"It's tough pitching in New York. I'm glad to be on the other side now," said Mussina, who signed a six-year, $88.5 million free-agent contract with the Yankees this winter after 10 seasons with Baltimore.
When he left Yankee Stadium late Wednesday night, after Andy Pettitte had beaten the Royals 8-2, Mussina said he was expecting to have some butterflies before his start. First time pitching in pinstripes, all of that stuff. But when he emerged from the Vette in the cool of yesterday morning, he felt none of that.
An hour later, he sat in front of his locker drinking a lime-green Powerade and filling in the upper-right and lower-left corners of the USAToday crossword puzzle. Still no jitters.
Once batting practice ended, and the clubhouse began to clog with media and teammates, Mussina went into the trainer's room, where he lay on a table with his eyes closed for 10 minutes to relax. He wandered into the players' lounge, watched a bit of SportsCenter on ESPN, then returned to the trainer's room, where Scott Brosius was doing a different crossword.
Still no jitters.
Mussina walked to the bullpen about a half-hour before the game's 1:05 p.m. scheduled start, and said nothing to catcher Jorge Posada or pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre.
"I didn't say anything to him," Posada said. "He's a 'Hi' and 'Bye' guy."
Mussina waited in the clubhouse when his teammates ran onto the field for the national anthem, emerging after organist Eddie Layton's final strains had been replaced by Guns N Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle."
It was time to go to work.
The Royals' first three hitters went down in order, on 11 pitches. Mussina headed for the clubhouse and sat in a leather armchair in the players' lounge. He drank water and the green Powerade and was watching when Paul O'Neill hit a solo home run against Royals starter Dan Reichert in the bottom of the first inning.
Kansas City put runners on second and third with two outs in the second inning, but the four-time Gold Glove winner got A.J. Hinch on a comebacker to end the threat. He then marched back to the lounge and sat in the same chair.
"Once a pitcher does that, we don't do anything with that chair the rest of the game," equipment manager Rob Cucuzza said. "We don't move it. We don't let anybody sit in it. In fact, somebody else did sit in it, and we got him right out of there."
The game rolled on -- crisp and quick. Reichert allowed the Yankees nothing after the first inning, and no Royals reached second base against Mussina after the second.
In the top of the sixth, when Mike Sweeney beat out a close play at first base with two outs to extend the inning, Mussina found himself pitching carefully to Royals cleanup hitter Jermaine Dye. Not wanting Dye to give the Royals the lead with a two-run home run, Posada called for a changeup on a 3-0 count.
"I like to have fun like that," Posada said.
But this was, actually, fun. Mussina had such great control of all his pitches yesterday that Posada knew the 3-0 change would hit the exact spot he wanted -- at the knees on the outside corner. So with the count 3-1 and Dye confused, Mussina ran a fastball in on his hands and got him to ground to short for the final out of the inning.
"He puts hitters on their heels, because he has so many pitches he can throw for strikes," manager Joe Torre said. "And he was throwing them all today."
He threw 88 pitches in those first seven innings, 59 of them strikes. Since a bruised leg in spring training put him slightly behind schedule, Torre didn't want him to throw too many more. So before the eighth, he told Mussina they would get closer Mariano Rivera ready.
Rivera was warming up as Raul Ibanez flied out to open the eighth, as Rey Sanchez singled and as Luis Alicea flied to center for the second out. At that point, Torre jogged to the mound. He wanted to do Mussina the courtesy of acting as if he hadn't already made the decision, which is why he jogged and why he waited until he was on the mound to call for Rivera. But Mussina, the businessman, understood.
"If I can pitch 34 games this year and hand the ball to (Rivera) in the eighth or ninth inning 34 times, I think we have a pretty good chance," said Mussina, who walked off the mound to a standing ovation from the paid crowd of 26,696.
And of course, Rivera proved him right. He got Carlos Beltran to end the eighth, then pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his first save of the season.
"I don't want to put pressure on myself," Rivera said. "But after the way he pitched, of course I was trying to be careful."
Mussina was smiling after the game. He was happy with what he had accomplished. He was happy to be pitching on the third day of the season, with Roger Clemens and Pettitte going out and winning two ahead of him. He was happy to turn the ball over to one of baseball's elite closers. This is why he's not in Baltimore anymore. This is why he wanted to be a Yankee.
"There are a lot of places I could have gone where they would have thrown me out there Opening Day and expected me to win 22 games," Mussina said. "That's not the case here."
No, it's not. Here, some people don't even recognize you when you show up for work in the morning.
And that's just fine with the new guy.
