Our town: a national tragedy hits home for Orioles pitcher Mike Mussina

Sporting News, The, March 3, 1997 by Buster Olney

There is a big hole in Montoursville, Pa., on the north side of Mike Mussina's home. He's having a couple of rooms added to this house that sits on a hill where the Orioles pitcher plans to live when he is finished playing baseball.

But the construction, attempted in temperatures ranging from zero to 25 degrees, is deliberate, inevitably and repeatedly delayed by snow. Mussina isn't sure when the hole will be filled. "You know how it is," he says. "You just don't know how long it's going to take."

Mussina was born in Williamsport, six or seven miles west of here, and his parents moved to Montoursville, a town of about 5,000 located about 180 miles northwest of Philadelphia, a year later. Mussina grew up riding his bike from one side of town to the other, to meet friends in Indian Park. He felt confident--he felt safe--that if something happened along the way, if he got a flat tire or he fell over and scraped his hands badly, he could knock on the front door of the nearest house and he probably would know the person who answered, or they would know him. Or, they would know his father or mother, or somebody who knew him. It's like that in small towns, where there are only one or two degrees of separation.

In this way, Mussina and most everybody in Montoursville knew the 16 members of the Montoursville High French Club killed in the TWA Flight 800 explosion and crash last duly 17. In this way, everybody knew the five chaperones. It's like that in small towns.

Mussina coaches football at Montoursville High when baseball season ends, and he coached Rance Hettler, who wanted to study criminal justice in college. Judy Rupert had been a secretary in the school guidance department for 34 years, and Mussina knew her when he was a student and got to know her better after graduating, stopping by her office during football season to check the daily list of students out sick or charged with detention.

Amanda Karschner, 17, worked part-time at Cellini's Submarine House, saving money for the $1,50.0 trip to Paris. Mussina frequents Cellini's so regularly that he comes in the back door, by the grill. Occasionally, when owner Charlie DeSanto is short on help, Mussina will pitch in and fill some orders; he can make cheese steak subs and tuna salad. He can handle anything, Mussina says, "except for the cash register."

Mussina knew Amanda Karschner, of course. It's like that in small towns. But it should never be like this.

The message light was blinking when Mussina checked into his room in the Boston Sheraton at 3 a.m. Last July 18. The Orioles had just completed a three-game series with Toronto and flown to Boston after the last game, many children accompanying the group. This was the annual trip when players could take family with them. Mussina's longtime girlfriend, also from Montoursville, was with him.

The message was from Mussina's younger brother, Mark, who left word that a plane had crashed just outside of New York, and that there had been people from Montoursville on board.

In the morning, Mussina called his father, Malcolm, in Montoursville. No names had been released, but compiling a list wasn't hard. "You called someone who knew someone in the family," Malcolm Mussina says, "and they knew the kids and the other people who were supposed to be on the plane."

And what father and son understood was that anyone expected to go would be on that plane. The French Club had been planning the trip for months, raising money by washing cars and selling hoagies. "When you're from Montoursville," Mussina would say later, "you just don't pick up and go to Paris.... For a lot of these kids, it was probably their first time flying."

Having heard the list from his father, Mussina hung up the phone and began to place names with faces, specific memories. He could remember talking to Hettler, offering some point of instruction. He could remember Hettler in games, making plays. Jacque Watson, 18, had been on the plane her mother had been the cheerleader adviser when Mussina was in school, and he vaguely could remember Jacque when she was a little girl' running around the cheerleaders during basketball games.

Mussina watched CNN, and suddenly he saw people from his hometown being interviewed, in places he recognized. For several days, he felt like he didn't inhabit his body. It was all very real, all very wrong. "I wasn't there," he says, "and I had just that kind of helpless feeling. I was thinking there had to be something I could do, and there really wasn't."

He thought about calling some of the families. "But I didn't want to ask too many questions, or be too much of a nuisance," Mussina says. "There were already too many questions being asked (by the media) than was necessary.... People were upset, people were busy."

Mussina wanted to go home, and in the days that followed, he repeatedly expressed that desire to his father. "It's hard not being there," he said at the time. "It's hard because I've been there my whole life, really. And now this is the toughest thing that has ever happened to the town, and I can't be there."