Jamie Moyer

  The lefthanded pitcher whose once-record win total Jamie Moyer tied last night had a resumé that contained considerably more than those 266 victories.  While Moyer, the Phillies' 47-year-old lefthander, is one of baseball's most intriguing figures, his story reads like a mundane child's tale when compared to the novel that was Eppa Rixey's life.   Rixey was the son of a wealthy Virginia banker, the nephew of the nation's surgeon general. At 6-foot-5, when he arrived in Philadelphia in 1912, he was the game's tallest player.

JAMIE MOYER will be back in town next week. Baseball's 36th-winningest pitcher and his wife, Karen, will host "An Evening at the Ballpark with Karen and Jamie Moyer" on the 17th, a fun fundraiser for their charitable foundation that, among other things, operates the nation's largest network of bereavement camps for kids who have lost loved ones. (Eagles David Akers and Jon Dorenbos, along with St. Joe's basketball coach Phil Martelli and tennis legend Billie Jean King, will be among the dinner's celebrity waiters.

BERT BLYLEVEN, the Flinging Dutchman, missed Cooperstown last winter by five votes. It was his 13th chance to nail the required 75 percent of the BBWAA vote. He got 74.2. So, the author of a 287-250 record over a 22-year career should be on the Hall of Fame podium next summer. It is a game of inches - and fractions. In the latest chapter of his 24-season pursuit of Methuselah and title of oldest pitcher to ever (add your own category), Jamie Moyer left the mound Sunday after working a scoreless seventh inning against the Blue Jays, soon to be 9-6. He left behind 4,005 innings pitched and more home runs, 506, than any man who ever hung a curve or grooved a fastball to Chris Wheeler's Land of Middle In. His 267-201 record is a body of work in progress.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - There is something of the epic gesture in what Jamie Moyer did here yesterday, in what the 47-year-old pitcher has been doing here for a month. It would be so much easier if Moyer took note of the birth date on his driver's license, did the math, and retired. Easier for the Phillies, who could then plug Kyle Kendrick into their starting rotation, and easier for Moyer himself. He has labored long and hard to recover from a painful abdominal injury, a blood infection and knee surgery - all in an effort to prolong a career that already defies probability.

When the Seattle Mariners are introduced before Game 1 of the American League Championship Series this afternoon at Safeco Field, the hometown fans are likely to give Jamie Moyer one of the loudest ovations of all. Hey, the guy deserves it. Without Moyer, the Mariners might be home booking tee times. Without Moyer, they might have gone down in history as that team that churned out 116 wins but flopped in the first round of the playoffs. Moyer helped save the Mariners from a division-series death by beating the Cleveland Indians in Game 2 and then again in Game 5. Both of those wins came in pressure situations.

Jamie Moyer did everything right last night. He mixed pitches, changed speeds, worked pitches in and out and up and down. He baffled. He baffled the Phillies and led the Seattle Mariners to a 4-0 victory at Veterans Stadium. "He can pitch," Phillies manager Larry Bowa said. "If you look up the definition of a pitcher, you'll see his picture. " The pitcher grew up a Phillies fan, starred at Souderton High and St. Joseph's University, and earned his first major-league victory by beating the Phillies' Steve Carlton in 1986.

A steaming cup of Starbucks in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, Jamie Moyer eases his SUV to the side of the road and becomes a tour guide. The afternoon is cold and clear, the sun reflecting off Puget Sound. Moyer points to his right at the snowcapped Olympic Mountains, then nods to his left, where Mount Rainier rises spectacularly above the city skyline. This is the perfect backdrop for a story about Moyer's career and all the good works that have come from it. This is the place where it all came together for him, where he finally became the pitcher he always knew he could be, where he was a mainstay in the Seattle Mariners' rotation for 10 years, loving every minute of it. And, yet, as the caffeine kicks in, all Moyer talks about is the six weeks he spent with the Phillies last season and how they made him feel, well, like a kid again.

Think of the people with whom Jamie Moyer has played baseball: Cal Ripken Jr. Andre Dawson. Nolan Ryan. Ken Griffey Jr. Ryan Howard. Impressive. Still, the list of players he has pitched against is even more impressive. T. Scott Brandon from Port Angeles, Wash., put together a lineup of Hall of Fame players who have faced Moyer. Thanks to Brandon, we took it a step further. We asked Moyer about each of those Hall of Famers. Because we organized the lineup by position, we designated three of them as pinch-hitters.

The losses have piled up quickly, and they are starting to become difficult to count. That's not a good sign. "What have we lost? Three in a row? Four in a row? Something like that," Jamie Moyer said last night after the Phillies' 5-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics at McAfee Coliseum. Actually, it's six in a row. "The day off felt like a loss, too," he said. The Phillies are searching for somebody ? anybody ? to step up and stop the madness. It looked as if Moyer might be that man last night.

1. Chipper Jones          2. Jamie Moyer 3. Jim Thome             4. Billy Wagner

Chipper Jones unloaded on Jamie Moyer on Saturday night, figuratively speaking. Moyer, the Colorado Rockies' lefthander, accused the Braves slugger of stealing signs while on second base. According to Mark Bowman of MLB.com, Jones responded that Moyer is "paranoid," that he believes others are stealing signs because he played for the Phillies "who are known for stealing signs," then challenged the 49-year-old lefthander to "meet him in the hallway" if he wanted to take things any further.

ROCKIES PITCHER James Moyer isn't talking. Braves third baseman Chipper Jones won't shut up. During Saturday night's game, Moyer accused Jones of stealing signs. Jones was on second at the time, having doubled in a run to cut the Rockies' lead to 6-2. One batter later, Brian McCann singled home Jones. The Braves went on to win , 13-9. On Sunday, Jones said Moyer was paranoid and even took a shot at the Phillies, the team the 49-year-old lefthander played with for five seasons.

New York Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda will miss the entire 2012 season because of a right shoulder anterior labral tear, the team announced Wednesday. He will have surgery May 1. It is yet another setback for the 23-year-old righthander the Yankees acquired from Seattle in exchange for blue-chip hitting prospect Jesus Montero. As a rookie last season, Pineda went 9-10 with a 3.74 ERA, recording 173 strikes in 171 innings and was named to the all-star team. Pineda, after arriving for spring training 20 pounds overweight, started the regular season on the disabled list with shoulder tendinitis.

The Hall of Fame has asked lefthander Jamie Moyer for some sort of memorabilia to commemorate his record-setting game on Tuesday, when the 49-year-old became the oldest pitcher ever to win a major-league contest. Moyer wasn't sure whether the Hall wanted his glove or maybe his whole Colorado Rockies uniform, but he said he would send something to Cooperstown. "To have your name mentioned with great players of the past or Hall of Fame players, it's pretty special," the former Phillie said after his seven efficient innings beat the San Diego Padres, 5-3. Moyer is 49 years and 150 days old. Jack Quinn of the Brooklyn Dodgers was 49 years and 70 days old on Sept.

JAMIE MOYER turned in a vintage performance in becoming the oldest pitcher to ever win a major league game. The 49-year-old Moyer (1-2) threw seven masterful innings and Dexter Fowler hit a two-run homer, helping the Colorado Rockies hold on for a 5-3 win over the San Diego Padres on Tuesday night. The former Phillie was sharp all evening as he picked up his 268th career win, tying him with Hall of Famer Jim Palmer for 34th on the career list. Relying on a consistent cutter and mixing in a 78-mph fastball, the cunning lefty gave up just six hits and two runs - both unearned - as he kept the Padres hitters at bay and off balance.

NO WIN FOR the ages. Or, for that matter, the aged. At 49, Jamie Moyer failed in his second attempt to become the oldest pitcher to win a major league game when Madison Bumgarner took a no-hit bid into the sixth and scattered four hits over 7 1/3 innings in visiting San Francisco's 4-2 win over the Colorado Rockies on Thursday. Moyer's shot at history was thwarted not only by Bumgarner, another crafty lefthander who in many ways is a younger version of Moyer, but also by teammate Dexter Fowler, whose sixth-inning error on a routine fly ball to center led to two unearned runs.

After giving up four runs, two of them earned, and eight hits in 51/3 innings in a 4-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants on Thursday, 49-year-old lefthander Jamie Moyer (the pride of Souderton, and hero of us old guys) is still looking for his first win with the Colorado Rockies. That's not to say the former Phillie isn't doing extraordinary things every time he's on the mound. For one, the age difference between Moyer and the Giants' 22-year-old lefty Madison Bumgarner - 26 years and 256 days - was the third-largest between starters since 1900 and the largest since 1965, says Stats LLC. That September, a 59-year-old Satchel Paige came back for a stint with the Kansas City Athletics and faced 29-year-old Bill Monbouquette of the Boston Red Sox. Since that was Paige's only start in 1965, Thursday's game made Moyer, rejuvenated by ligament-replacement surgery on his left elbow, the oldest pitcher to make multiple starts in a season.

HOUSTON - On Saturday night, 49-year-old Jamie Moyer became the oldest player to appear in a game since 1980 when he started for the Rockies. "Going out to the bullpen, I had a lot of things running through my head," Moyer said. "But once I started running and playing catch, it was all baseball. It was a very good feeling to be where I'd been before and a place I love being. " But the National League's youngest team gave baseball's oldest player fits, as J.D. Martinez homered and drove in three runs for a 7-3 Astros win. Moyer was in trouble from the start.

When Jamie Moyer made his major-league debut in 1986, he went against Steve Carlton - who has been been in the Hall of Fame for 18 years. Moyer found out Friday that he had made the rotation for Colorado after missing all of last season following Tommy John surgery. "It's an opportunity, and I think it's a great opportunity to try to take it and run with it," said the 49-year-old former Phillie. "I've looked at my whole career as an opportunity, especially as I've gotten older.

I got the horse right here, The name is Paul Revere . . . Can do, can do - From "Guys and Dolls"   Your first thought is, Lord but he's big. Freight train big. And that white blaze that runs down his forehead, it reminds you of a lightning bolt. Could it be an omen? Is this, at long last, The One? Steady there, Pilgrim. Throttle back. We know you're ready to fall in love all over again, that you've been standing out here in the rain waiting forlornly and forever and a day for the next Big Red. But it's not fair, and you ought not to be saddling this one with all your Secretariat expectations.