A bit of discouraging news from LaVelle E. Neal III:

Ron Mahay's season is in jeopardy. An MRI exam today revealed a torn right rotator cuff. While it's not his pitching shoulder, he still might need surgery and would be in danger of missing the rest of the season. The Twins are determining their next course of action with Mahay. We're all a little stunned by this because it didn't look like he landed that hard when he flopped after a squibber hit near the mound.

Mahay turned 39 this summer. He first reached the majors in 1995, as an outfielder. But the outfielding didn't work out so well, for the simple reason that Mahay couldn't really hit. So in '96 Mahay turned to pitching ... and took to it so quickly that he re-reached the majors in '97, and went 3-0 with a 2.52 ERA with the Red Sox.

That was eight teams and 13 years ago. It's been a nice run. Mahay's got a winning record, a perfectly decent ERA, and four career saves.

That won't be Mahay's legacy, though. My guess is that he'll be mostly remembered as the last "replacement player" to appear in the majors. In 1995 -- as some of you recall -- Major League Baseball convinced a number of minor leaguers and ex-major leaguers to cross the picket lines and open the season as "major leaguers" if the real players weren't back in the fold.

Mahay was one of them. So was Brendan Donnelly, who last pitched on July 23 before drawing his release from the Pirates. Donnelly's 39, too. Maybe he'll pitch next year, but the odds don't seem in his favor. The same goes for Mahay, who last pitched on Saturday.

So Mahay may have lasted the longest. Since the middle '90s, he's had to withstand the scorn of the more militant union members, and he's had to live without the financial perks that almost every other player takes for granted, as replacement players have been forever prohibited from joining the Players Association, and thus are ineligible for income from licensing revenues (according to this page, Mahay's APBA name is "Red Crestwood").