PHILADELPHIA — A year ago, Mike Mussina wrapped up a 20-win season and a career in which he played for the Yankees for eight years. He played with most of the Yankees currently playing for a championship.
Something that Mussina never won. Still, Mussina said seeing his former teammates in the World Series while he’s in his first year of retirement isn’t tough to watch.
“I’m happy for ‘em. I’m glad they got a chance to do this,” Mussina told The Post in a phone interview yesterday. “But I’m not sick about being retired.” Mussina has talked before about how much he relishes retirement, but it’s hard to miss his unfortunate timing. The Yankees and Phillies were set to play Game 3 of the World Series last night. This is the Yankees’ first Fall Classic appearance since 2003 against the Marlins. Who started for the Yankees in Game 3 of that series? Mussina. He went seven innings, allowing one run in the Yankees’ 6-1 victory in Miami.
That was the last World Series game Mussina pitched, and before this past Thursday night’s Game 2, that was the last World Series game the Yankees had won.
Though the Yankees missed the playoffs last year, Mussina’s final season, they had made the postseason in each of his other seven years in New York and reached the World Series in 2001 and 2003. That’s why Mussina feels as if he can’t be bitter now.
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“I had my chances,” he said. “We were in the playoffs seven years in a row.”
mark.hale@nypost.com