"I didn't want to go out with somebody telling me it was time to go," Mussina said, "trying to
find a job and you can't find a job. I never wanted to bounce around from one team to another to keep playing."
He came to the decision more than a month before reporting to spring training, in January.
"I was just working out one day and thought about what I've been going through,
how tough it was (in 2007)," he said. "I said, 'You know what? Good or bad, this is going to
be my last year.' "