I can never remember my buddy Mussina's place in the rotation, so I click into Yankees gamers every few days to have a shot at catching him.

As a fan of Tyler Kepner's, I enjoyed this lede last week.

Mike Mussina was 22 when he made his major league debut here in 1991. He learned right away a lesson that would define his career: sometimes, a pitcher can do only so much.

Mussina was brilliant that day, firing 124 pitches. One of them went for a homer, by Frank Thomas. It was the only run of the game. Mussina had pitched well and almost won, the first of many "almost" moments over the next 17 seasons.

Mussina has almost won a championship, almost won a Cy Young award, almost pitched a perfect game, almost won 20 games. But he has never done any of those things, and now that he is 39, the knee-jerk reflex is to pronounce him finished when he pitches poorly.

Yet Mussina showed on Wednesday that he has not pitched this long by accident. He silenced the Chicago White Sox for seven innings and led the Yankees to a 6-4 victory, the 252nd of his career, one more than the Hall of Famer Bob Gibson.

That win moved Moose past Bob Gibson on the all-time wins list, and yesterday's victory — giving up two runs in five innings, needing the bullpen's help but getting by enough — put him in a tie with Carl Hubbell and the 19th century's Al Spalding at 253. A blog called Strategic Failure has done a nice job at tracking the wins this year. Last night's roundup was on the money, "When you are trying to stave off the deleterious impact of advancing age and declining skills, you need wins like the one Mike Mussina earned tonight."

Hank Steinbrenner was probably right when he said he wanted Mike to pitch like Jamie Moyer, who's evolved his pitching in the ways Strategic Failure mentions amid its posts. But I sure liked Mike's response. "I don't have a lefty glove."

"Colonel Von Luger, it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. If they cannot escape, then it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability."

Thought the NYT's coverage of Phil Hughes blog, we end up at said blog. On that blog, and in better image quality on the great Journal-News LoHud Yankees Blog, we see the wall decoration Mike Mussina has led in the empty space between his locker and Hughes' locker. We understand.

Amid the Redskins losing their first game, my fantasy team winning its second and the Nats finishing at RFK in style (post coming later), Mike won his third game in a row and 250th in his career.

The headlines this morning have gone to a thaw in the Joba rules. The Times' first sentence late Sunday afternoon was "Around this time last month, Mike Mussina pitched himself out of the rotation." By this morning, it was "Rules may be made to be broken, but it seemed there was no chance Joba Chamberlain would pitch yesterday against the Toronto Blue Jays."

Vic Ziegel of the New York Daily News may have written the best explanation, beginning: "Mike Mussina won his 250th game yesterday, moved another step closer to Cy Young and Secretariat, and you wouldn't have believed the crowd surrounding his locker after the game. There were probably enough of us to fit into a toll booth, with plenty of room for the coin collection."

In the blogosphere, Foucault's Lunchbox noted Mussina moved past Vic Willis on the all-time wins list. "Vic Willis began his major league baseball career in 1898, but did not get inducted into the Hall of Fame until 1995, by which time he had been dead for 48 years." LiveJournal's Mike Mussina: Male Gigolo continued to not publish.

Of yesterday's coverage, MLB.com has the most dramatic lede.

NEW YORK — In the darkest moments of Mike Mussina's rotation exile, he pondered his baseball mortality, admitting that he had only a finite amount of time remaining in clubhouses.

Yet as bad as Mussina's worst three starts were, he was convinced that he still had it in him to be better. For the second straight start, Mussina proved it on Tuesday, shutting the Orioles out for seven innings in a 12-0 Yankees victory that carried important playoff implications.

The New York Times looks to thought (and expects a playoff start).

Mike Mussina has always believed that a good pitcher wins about half of his starts. Last night was the 500th start of Mussina's career, and he won for the 249th time. Not quite half, but Mussina, clearly, is a good pitcher again.
…
The victory evened Mussina's record at 10-10, and although the Orioles are wheezing to the finish line, they have several hitters who usually torment Mussina. But he allowed only three singles and a walk, striking out six. When he was done, the crowd was chanting "Moose," not boo.

"That was nice," Mussina said. "I'm glad they still remembered who I am."

The Associated Press lede is of little consequence ("Back on the field in time for the stretch drive, Mike Mussina and Doug Mientkiewicz are helping the New York Yankees…"), but the story gets to a comparison the others don't.

Mussina (10-10) was dropped from the rotation in late August after allowing 19 earned runs over 9 2-3 innings in three straight losses. He made one relief appearance after that, his first ever in a regular-season game.
…
Mussina struck out six, walked one and has thrown 12 2-3 scoreless innings over two outings since his starting spot was restored. He has won at least 10 games in an AL-record 16 straight seasons.

See the box score.

There's only one major leaguer whose career I've followed since his debut. There's only one whose line I read regularly. There's only one who's playing as poorly as he is. I don't know what to do about it. Take Monday night — the would-be redemption night — when Mike gave up big runs and lost his third game in a row.

The New York Times:

Mussina is the most analytical of pitchers, but he seems mystified by this slump. He talked about the small slice of the game that pitchers actually control. But even that much has gone awry, shaking his confidence deeply.

"Right now, I let go of it and I don't feel like anything good is going to happen," Mussina said. "It's tough to pitch that way. You can't play the game that way to feel like you have no control over anything, and that's how I feel right now.

"Even the 60 feet, 6 inches, it doesn't feel like I have a grasp of, and two weeks ago I felt like I could do anything I wanted. That's how this game is. It'll slap you in the face when you think you've got it. I felt good about it and now I don't feel good at all."

The Yankees owe Mussina more than $11 million for next season, but he seems to be nearing the end. It is a scary and sudden reality, and it has knocked him as low as he has ever been.

The Associated Press:

"If Joe thinks that somebody else can give us a lift or do the job better, then that's up to him," Mussina said. "I want to keep going out there and figure out what's going on because I can't believe in three starts that I forgot how to pitch after 17 years. So I just hope he has confidence enough in me to keep sending me out there and let me figure this out. But at the same time, we've got to win ballgames and I'll understand if he thinks that we need to do something else.

In his last three starts, the 38-year-old Mussina has allowed 19 earned runs in 9 2/3 innings — a 17.69 ERA. Before the staggering slump, Mussina had won four straight starts — giving up eight combined runs — and improved to 8-7.

"He's had some quality performances for us," Torre said. "He's getting older, but you don't fall off the cliff this fast."

The Staten Island Advance:

After the bottom of the second inning last night at Comerica Park, Mike Mussina called over Yankees pitching coach Ron Guidry.

"I don't know what to do," Mussina said.

"Keep making the best pitches you can make," Guidry said.

MLB.com coverage:

The Yankees will meet on Tuesday in New York to discuss Mussina's immediate future; manager Joe Torre said that Mussina tentatively remains on turn to make his next scheduled start on Saturday against the Devil Rays, but that would be subject to change pending an exploratory conference with the veteran righty and pitching coach Ron Guidry.

Names widely floated as possibilities to take Mussina's place in the rotation have included Triple-A hurlers Kei Igawa, Ian Kennedy and Steven White. But Mussina was not about to concede his rotation spot.

Just a few weeks ago, after Mike won three straight, I thought he could do another three this season to reach 250 lifetime. I figured a 15-win season next year would put him within range of 300 and Cooperstown. But things have gotten lost.

It's been about 17 years since I picked up Mike's Score rookie — draft rookie — in a now-defunct Bethesda card shop, and now's the first time I've ever been worried about him. The columns and blogs are calling for exile to the bullpen, and Mike sounds like he's watching his work from the sidelines. In the blogosphere, the LoHud Yankees and the Psycho Fan have takes on Mike's psyche this week, and the latter links to River Ave. Blues' recent "I come to praise Mike Mussina" essay to offset their recent criticism. I don't take issue with the criticism. It's their right as fans. My two cents: When a person plays out so many games in his head, failures in the real games invalidate all the thinking.

I don't think Mike's playing too many games in his head — more that failure has greater impact on his methods. As someone who's tried for years to think Mike's televised pitches into the strike zone, the failure of one's brain to affect the physical world is always a tiny disappointment. I can only imagine the disconnect when the ball flies back, hard, over your head, repeatedly to the point of being a wild pattern.

I'm looking tonight online for an old Mussina replica jersey from the Orioles days. I'm not ruling out tracking down M&M Boys items either. It's the most I can do. I'm also hanging my Mussina T-shirt from a shelf. Starting now, it doesn't come down until a win or retirement. I'm still rooting for wins 250 and 300 for him. He's Mike Mussina, my baseball hero, and I have to tell you as much because maybe you can root for him too.

Previous Mussina coverage in this blog:
-6/17/07: When moose collide
-8/6/06: Collecting collecting coverage
-6/18/06: "Could Mussina make tracks back to O's?"
-10/2/05: Mike Mussina's night at the ballpark
-9/23/05: Welcome back
-10/13/04: In search of perfection

Taking a journey from the press box and using the narrative style that puts him up with Dave Shenin as my favorite baseball beat writers, Tyler Kepner of The Times mamanged to work not one but two of my favorite things into a lede this week.

Their seats are in the front row of Section 616, in the upper deck behind home plate at Yankee Stadium, a convenient spot for paying homage to the Yankees' starting pitcher. Gary DeSpirito and his son, Anthony, from Hawthorne, N.J., attend eight games a year in those seats, and most of the time the pitcher is Mike Mussina.

Before their last game, the DeSpiritos searched Google for a picture of a moose and printed a bunch to tape to the awning in front of them after each strikeout. But Mussina pitched badly, as he often has this season. The father and son hung just two moose that night.

"He lost that game," Anthony said, "so we're trying something different."

This time, they brought 10 copies of an image of Bullwinkle, the cartoon moose. At the end of each inning from the third through the seventh, Mussina put them to work. Spotting his fastball and curve with uncanny precision, Mussina struck out seven over seven and two-thirds innings, leading the Yankees to a 7-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Read the rest. Should the Yankees make the playoffs this year, my box of Mussina cards is ready in the closet, waiting to cover my coffee table (completely) on nights when Mike hits the hill. The Mussina T-shirt and stuffed Bullwinkle are nearby. I like the DeSpiritos.

Previous Bullwinkle coverage
-July 2005: Cereality opens in Chicago
-May 2004: Did you know?
-May 2003: Delorian vs. Wayback Machine
-December 2002: This explains many things

Previous Mussina coverage:
-June 2006: "Could Mussina make tracks back to O's?"
-October 2005: Mike Mussina's night at the ballpark
-October 2004: In search of perfection

To Moose for getting his 200th win.