Some of the greatest players in baseball wheezed to the finish, wearing odd uniforms, their skills long gone. Willie Mays was a Met. Duke Snider was a Giant. Steve Carlton was a Twin. They were sad examples of the truth in the Robert Frost quotation: “No memory of having starred/atones for later disregard/or keeps the end from being hard.”

Mike Mussina never wanted that for himself. Last January, as he started his off-season workouts, Mussina had 250 career victories. He took a critical look at his previous four seasons, in which he had earned just 51 wins. Only 2006, when he was 15-7, met his standard of excellence.

Mussina decided then to retire, to resist the thorny path to 300 victories and to approach 2008 as if he were a senior in high school, savoring the final moments of a life to which he would not return. He surprised himself by winning 20 games for the first time, but it never changed his resolve. He was done.

“I always said when I got to this point, I wanted to go out on my own terms,” Mussina said in a conference call with reporters Thursday to announce his decision formally.