Mussina reflects on his town's tragedy

BY BOB HERZOG | Newsday Staff Writer

Mike Mussina has total recall about July 17, 1996, the day TWA Flight 800 crashed off the coast of Suffolk County.

The current Yankees pitcher was a member of the rival Baltimore Orioles that summer and then, as now, is a resident of Montoursville, Pa., hometown of 21 of the deceased passengers.

"I still remember where I was when I heard about it," Mussina said before Tuesday's game at Yankee Stadium. "We had taken a flight [from Baltimore] to Boston and when I got to the hotel I happened to have my girlfriend at the time and her daughter with me. [They are now his wife and step-daughter.]

"We got to the hotel late I want to say 2:30 in the morning and we flipped on the TV. You didn't have to turn on CNN just turn on the TV and it was on every channel."

Mussina was stunned when he saw the scroll across the bottom of the TV screen. "I'm saying, 'Man, what's going on!' I see something about the high school French class from Pennsylvania and then they put something there about Montoursville and I said, 'That can't be right.'"

He learned the awful truth shortly afterwards.

"We spent most of the morning and early afternoon, before I had to go to Fenway Park, trying to find out who it was, what anybody knew," said Mussina, who knew several of the teenaged victims. "It was tough. Later on that summer, I pitched a game in Oakland and flew all the way home for a memorial service before going back to Baltimore. They [the Orioles] let me miss a game on the West Coast."

Mussina said the event, "had a huge impact" on the tiny town in western Pennsylvania.

"Two degrees of separation is probably as far as you'd have to go to have all 21 people covered," he said. "I'm sure it still is tough for a lot of people, but everybody is doing the best they can. It's hard to believe it's been 10 years."