He rocky slightly, kicked and fired the ball to the catcher with his huge, determined stride.

He was 39 and, statistically at least, fading into the netherworld of mediocrity. His fastball was not so fast.

The sportswriter pestered him about retirement-asked him what he was going to do when he was out of the game.

Out of the game? He was the same one that they had once written be the best ever.

So now he, too, must know he was not. A great, a giant-but no one would ever say. "There goes Tom Seaver, the greatest pitcher that ever lived.

Perhaps that was what drove him now, in another pitching dimension. When he started, he was chasing Mathew son. Johnson and Koufas, but they were still ahead of him and would be forever.

But Seaver was still chasing harmony with each delivery, each perfect delivery.

Every other pitcher has some slight flaw in his motion, some minute deviation that helps him adjust to his own physical limitations. Some of these adjustments are almost imperceptible, some are grotesque distortions.

Tom Seaver alone has the perfect motion.

On this day, almost a year ago now, Tom Seaver was warming up in the bullpen in Fenway Park. He was still on his first tour of the American League and was making his first appearance in the shadow of the venerable Green Monster.

If Tom Seaver and his 258 National League victories were impressed by the surroundings, they weren't showing it.

He looked strange in his new White Sox uniform. The old number '41 was still there, but the garb seemed foreign, almost traitorous.

The American League had treated Seaver to an unkind first month. He had lost his only two decisions and had racked up an ERA over six and without delving much further into the gory details of his decline, he had been allowing opposition batters to hit well over 300.

On that May evening, the Boston weather was ominous, so the right-hander was taking his warm-up tosses deliberately, pacing him self. The 39 year old Tom Seaver knew his arm couldn't bounce right back after a rain delay, the was if had 20 years before.

The clouds and the air of doom didn't stop Seaver's delivery from being any more or less than it had been. His arm speed was down and the hop on his pitches had diminished, but his motion remained tranquilly the same as that of the 22-year-old who burst onto the major league with a 16-13 campaign in 1967 with the woeful New York Mets.