I will always believe that the Yanks would have won the Serious that year, and I was always be bitter than Mattingly didn't get his ring. And that the Expos would have lived, if there had just been a postseason for them to get to.

it might be a risk over the long run, but there isn't a long run anymore, just the dash to the finish line ... it's a good thing and it's about time.

What brought me back into following the game was my then-GF/now-wife buying me a Felipe Alou rookie card that year. It was just such an awesome gesture, she knew how important baseball, and especially the Expos, were to me. In retrospect I could've saved myself a decade of suffering had the Alou card gesture not brought me back. But I also would've missed out on a lot more good stuff if I went that way.

"If I'm physically O.K., then I can keep pitching," he said. "It's a question of physically can I do it and mentally, do I want to keep going through this? When you're 15-7, it's always fun. The question you've got to ask yourself is, 'Can you deal with it when it's not fun, when it's hard?'

One thing Mussina will not do is hang around to try to win 300 games if he feels he cannot pitch to his standards. He does not understand the wisdom of judging a pitcher based on career stats, if some of those numbers were compiled when the pitcher was no longer elite.

Not a good summer.