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Three Hundred
and Counting
by Daniel Paulling
August 10, 2004
Look at Greg Maddux’s towering frame.
Er, no. 6-0, 185 is big, but not for a major league player.
Check out the radar gun blazing fastball.
Not quite with 88 mile-per-hour heat.
Then he’s gotta have a knee-buckling curveball or an awe-inspiring
slider.
Um, you needn’t worry Barry Zito or Ryan Wagner, no threats
here.
Why the heck is this guy so great?!
Well, two fellow Cubs have some input for the answer to that question.
“I think he's as prepared and studious as anybody I've ever
been around,” says Cubs manager Dusty Baker, who has been around
the likes of many baseball greats.
“He knows how to pitch regardless of what he has on that given
day,” adds Cubs reliever Mike Remlinger. “It's phenomenal
to me, the mental process that he has.”
Greg Maddux is perhaps one of the greatest pitchers of all time.
Whenever he comes to the mound, he has a game plan already in mind,
and 100 percent of the time it’s the correct thinking for that
situation. On the rare occasion that his location is off, he uses
his bulldog persona (his nickname is Mad Dog) to execute to the
best of his abilities.
“You have to understand what you can and can't do with the
baseball and not let your ego or emotions or anything else get in
the way of your pitch selection and how you throw a pitch,”
Maddux says.
And this approach must work halfway decently. I mean, Maddux --
a noted groundball artist -- has 300 wins, a career 2.93 ERA, four
Cy Young awards, and more career strikeouts than Red Sox ace Curt
Schilling.
Greg is also probably one of the most respected guys in all of baseball.
Cy Young award winners Tom Glavine and Roger Clemens had nothing
but praise to heap upon Maddux.
“It's obviously great what he did. It's well-deserved,”
said Clemens, who has recorded his 300th win. “I'm sure it
was special for him, I know it was for me. He really knows how to
pitch. I mean, the things he does consistently are the things we
all try to do: change speeds and hit your spots. We'd all like to
do those things and try to do them, but there aren't many who have
been consistently successful like he's been.”
“I'm very proud of him,” said Tom Glavine, a former teammate
of Maddux’s, who is next up for the 300 mark with 259 wins.
“And I'm proud I had the opportunity to play with him. He was
the epitome of consistency over his career. He's done a wonderful
job to get to the point he's at.”
“Those who know him will probably show much more excitement
and emotion over it than he will. At some point, though, he'll break
down and let everyone know what his career has meant to him. But
I don't anticipate it at 300.”
Congratulations, Mr. Maddux. It was a complete honor to have seen
you pitch with the Atlanta Braves and being able to see one of the
greatest of all time on the mound.
(Author’s Note: Isn’t it odd that Maddux won his 200th
and 300th games both against the Giants? The only other
person to win his 300th in a Cubs uniform was Grover
Cleveland Alexander and he got his 200th and 300th
wins against…the Giants. The score of Maddux’s 200th
and 300th wins? 8-4, both times. You can look it up.
Feel free to leave comments in the forums or
e-mail Daniel at daniel@athomeplate.com.
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