around him from The Warehouse. He was the Orioles union representative heading into the 1994 work stoppage. He had heard all of the MLB rhetoric from the owners and had read Lords Of The Realm.
Despite giving the Orioles a “hometown discount” the first time around, Mussina was not Angelos’ fool from the hills of Pennsylvania. He came home from Palo Alto with an economics degree in 3 ½ years. His dad was a well-heeled attorney in Williamsport, Pa., home of the Little League World Series and Hall of Fame. Tellem, who also represented Albert Belle and several other All Stars in Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, was the right man to find his value in the marketplace and strike a fair market deal. Mussina was a crossword puzzle aficionado and champion, and he was trying to solve this complex riddle with the Orioles without feeling emotional.
Four years earlier, Mussina signed an extension for three years and $20.5 million (with a portion deferred) – after inferior starting pitcher Alex Fernandez landed a 5-year, $35 million deal with the Florida Marlins and then tanked with an injury. Angelos always loved doing deferred deals and demanded it in many cases. Most agents balked, believing they were selling their client short of present-day value. Plus, other MLB teams would never broach the topic because they were trying to attract players, not offend them.
Mussina had already left millions on the table once, so Angelos sensed his weakness. But this time around, after pitching for $3-to-5 million under the market rate in 1998 and 1999, when he finished second in Cy Young Award voting behind Pedro Martinez, Mussina was drawing a harder line and was more apt to be insulted when Angelos negotiated from a position that “Moose” would never consider leaving the Orioles.
When the Sele deal fell apart – one more red flag and embarrassment for the club – it certainly cleared the way for the Orioles to have more funds remaining in an attempt to keep Mussina away from free agency at the end of the 2000 season. And even with the Orioles kingdom seemingly imploding at every level – for the first time since Camden Yards was built, the team was having trouble selling tickets in the offseason and around the holidays – Mussina still fancied being in Baltimore and playing his entire career with one team.
On Jan. 22, 2000, Mussina said he was “more open” to exploring the free agent market at the end of the season but reiterated his long-stated desire to stay with the Orioles.
On March 17, with a five-year, $50 million offer on the table for Mussina – or about half of what former Orioles teammate Kevin Brown got from the Los Angeles Dodgers in December 1998 – Angelos invited Tellem to meet in Fort Lauderdale. After a two-hour meeting, both sides offered wildly different interpretations of where they were in the negotiation. The Sun quoted a “team source” as saying “tangible progress” was made and “it was only a matter of time before a deal is struck.” Meanwhile, Tellem wasn’t so bullish on the prognosis, offering only: “I think a number of things got accomplished, but it would be premature to say anything further.”
After years of using the media and his fax machine to get his message out, Angelos was now beginning to hide behind his public relations staff. Team spokesman Bill Stetka told The Sun, “The Orioles have every intention of keeping Mike in Baltimore. That’s always been the case,” adding that his boss was encouraged by the chat with Tellem in Florida. Stetka also said the meeting was “productive” and “cordial.”
Mussina insisted he wasn’t chasing the monumental 7-year, $105 million deal that Kevin Brown landed in Hollywood. But he was also insistent that he would demand the market rate and not provide the “hometown” discounted deal he settled for years earlier when he had no interest in rocking the boat. “I’ve told Arn not to come to me with anything until he feels it’s close,” Mussina said. “I’m just concentrating on pitching. The other stuff will take care of itself, either sooner or later. I’m pretty sure demand for what I do won’t go down anytime soon.”
Spoken like a true economics major, even if Mussina had never shown a hint of greediness with the organization. If anything, it was just the opposite. He cost himself millions of dollars by playing nice the first time around. Now, he was watching the likes of Albert Belle get unprecedented money – more than Ripken, Anderson, Erickson, etc., who all had to wrangle with Mr. Angelos over the years, either via agents or personally over Italian food at Boccacio restaurant, the owner’s favorite Little Italy hangout, which he later purchased and shuttered.
There were several issues at stake beyond the obvious interest in keeping a No. 1 pitcher who was “homegrown” and still seemingly not terribly disconcerted about the unraveling of the franchise over the previous two seasons despite being privy to virtually all of the drama and chaos that followed. Once the season started in April, no one wanted to be presiding over an active negotiation. Mussina didn’t want to be peppered with questions in every American League city about his “interest” in pitching there next year.
A year earlier, Rafael Palmeiro played out his option year while all-but-begging the Orioles to resign him at the market rate. Now, a year after his departure, which was rightly perceived as Palmeiro tiring of Angelos’ demeaning negotiating style, even he weighed in from Texas in via The Sun on his feelings about how Mussina should negotiate.
“I know this for a fact: if Moose is a free agent he may end up getting $100 million,” Palmeiro told the paper during spring training. “I think it’s in their best interest for the Orioles to get [the extension] done as soon as possible. There’s going to be a whole bunch of teams lining up for Mike. And that’s for a lot of money. I know Mike wants to stay just like I wanted to stay. But don’t give him the opportunity to go out there and let some other big-market teams make it a competitive situation. You don’t know what happens then.”
Mussina, via Tellem as the intermediary, and Angelos agreed to disagree on years and dollars and entered the season without an extension.
Mike Mussina was the Orioles’ Opening Day starter on April 3, 2000 and allowed two hits in seven innings but faltered in the eighth in a 4-1 loss to the Cleveland Indians. The streaky Birds won five in a row and six in a row in April, but also lost four in a row. By late May, the team had fallen apart once again. Mussina wasn’t winning. Belle wasn’t hitting for power and seemed to be breaking down physically. Cal Ripken, who earned his 3,000 hit on April 15 in Minnesota, and Brady Anderson were a shell of their former All Star selves by the summer.
On May 1, Mussina was asked if he would waive his no-trade clause to allow the Orioles to deal him to a contender later in the summer. He succinctly said: “There is no way.” Mussina was in Baltimore until October, that much was clear.
On May 2, the Orioles were 15-10. By May 10, they’d fallen below .500 and would never recover. On May 20, Mussina was 1-6 with a 4.42 ERA and answering questions about why he was leading the majors in home runs allowed and the team was faltering for the third straight year.
“I don’t blame the ball,” Mussina told Tom Keegan of The New York Post. “It doesn’t feel any different to me. As pitchers, we can lift all the weights in the world and it’s not going to make us throw any harder. Conditioning and weight training programs are so much more sophisticated today the hitters are way stronger than they used to be. It used to be a hitter would have to pull the ball to get a home run. Now they’re so strong they can hit it out the other way. ‘Keep the ball away from the hitter and you keep him in the park’ – that doesn’t apply anymore. Even the Astrodome wasn’t the pitcher’s park it used to be. They moved the fences in. Same with Busch Stadium. Have you ever heard of a team moving the fences back? No, the only time there’s a change, they move them in.”
Mussina never said the word “steroids” but the sport had all-too-quietly become infested with performance enhancing drugs by this point and players who would later be deemed guilty in the court of public opinion were all around him. But, of course, any discussion of baseball’s taboo topic was never in play during this era. When players went from 16 home runs to 50 in one season – like Brady Anderson did in in 1996 – the conversation turned to how tightly the baseballs were wound and how close the fences were in the new, retro ballparks. Even two years removed from the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa love fest with “the long ball” and the Androstenedione controversy, pitchers were never allowed to say the word “steroids” for fear of indicting the guy in
