Mike Mussina Doesn't Care About Young People

(Note: A piece from Cheddar Ben follows this one from A.F.O.M.G.)

You know his cold gaze.

You know the maniacal eyes that suggest he'd as soon stick you with a shiv as throw you a devastating hook down 3-1 in the count.

But you never put it together, did you? "Mussina?" you'd tell yourself, "that kindly woodsman from Montoursville, PA (population 4,645)? Why, he'd never hurt a fly."

Until a day or two ago, this kind of naivety was perfectly understandable. Little did you realize that Mussina was hell bent on an entire generation of Little Leaguers being sacrificed to the bigger, faster, more-more-more impulses of maniacs like himself.

At least, that's the message of George Vecsey's expose on the Moose in Thursday's New York Times.

It seems Mussina has become the poster boy for the Big Republican Machine that is the Little League Baseball association, which has doggedly pronounced itself in favor of aluminum bats for youth leagues around the country, as opposed to their unquestionably less lethal wooden counterparts.

For his part, Vecsey's not taking it sitting down. In the midst of a largely anecdotal (which the author himself acknowledges) piece about the dangers of aluminum bats, Vecsey notes that "a ball coming off an aluminum bat registered at 94.86 miles an hour while a ball coming off a wooden bat registered 86.31."

Does that mean anything to Mussina though? Does he care? No! All he cares about is the almighty dollar:

"As a baseball player who has competed at the Little League, high school, college, minor league and major league levels -- and someone who has been in the vulnerable pitcher's position and seriously injured at the MLB level," Mussina wrote in an e-mail, "I can unequivocally state that non-wood bats are no more dangerous than their wooden counterparts."

Fine, maybe that quote doesn't illustrate the point I'm making here. Luckily we've got New York City lawmaker/diehard Mets fan James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn) here to cut through the spin.

"I think Mike Mussina did that storied franchise [the Yankees] a disservice by being used by a bat manufacturer to protect their monetary interests," Oddo said, eloquently. "To use his celebrity to try to derail a bill that I think is absolutely intended to protect kids is disgraceful."

I mean, where does this Mussina guy get off anyway? Too much is never enough for some of these people. You've really gotta wonder how many multi-million dollar contracts to you need to sign before you quit chasing every last dime.

All I can say is, whew, I'm glad I got out of Little League alive. I'm glad I didn't have to grow up in a world where my very survival was threatened by ballplayers like Mussina. I'm glad my biggest fear in those halcyon days was that I might find myself on the wrong end of a Bret Saberhagen bleach squirting episode, or of a projectile firecracker launched by Vince Coleman.

It was a more innocent time. I'm glad to be alive to tell the tale. I just hope, for their sake, that today's young people avoid the Sword of Damocles that Mike Mussina is ever so recklessly dangling just above their heads, and that some day they might regale me with the stories from their playing days, when death lurked around every corner, and one ballplayer just didn't give a damn.

- A.F.O.M.G.

(The images above appear courtesy of mlb.com and sportsecyclopedia.com)