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A funny and entertaining profile of Greg Madduz, from espn magazine.
Hoover
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HOW IN THE WORLD DID THIS GUY WIN 347 GAMES?
Greg Maddux is always in control, even when it doesn't look that way.
He'll take his secrets with him when he retires, so catch him while
you can.
by Tim Keown
DISCLAIMER: Greg Maddux is quoted in this story saying exceedingly
humble things. You are under no obligation to believe them. You are
encouraged to believe in the spirit of the words—Maddux is
almost obsessively self-deprecating—but that does not make them
true. And when he says, "Whenever you've had a little success in this
game, people think you know more than you do," don't believe that one
at all.
This is the kind of guy Maddux is: When he plays poker on planes with
teammates, they believe he knows what's in their hands
from looking at their faces. Even if he doesn't know, they think he
does, which serves the same purpose. Maddux has this
weird pull over people. Had he opted to be a cult leader rather than a
pitcher, he would have much land and many followers,
most of whom would probably spend their days tending to his private
golf course and/or rotating bottles of expensive cabernet
in the cellar.
Inside the man's head resides the most comprehensive history of the
most essential confrontation in s****ts: pitcher vs. hitter.
Maddux sees things nobody else sees, senses things nobody else senses.
The examples are legendary, almost mythical. He can
speed-read a batter's stance—a little more open, a few inches up
in the box—in the middle of his windup,
allowing him to change his grip from changeup to fastball in the time
it takes him to lift his leg. That's why, throughout his
career, Maddux has steered clear of certain catchers, because they
couldn't think fast enough to keep up with him. Padres
catchers Josh Bard and Michael Barrett will sometimes go an entire
game without giving him a sign. A little tap on the thigh for
location is all that's necessary.
WHEN MADDUX PLAYS POKER ON THE PLANE WITH TEAMMATES.
THEY SWEAR HE KNOWS WHAT'S IN THEIR HANDS JUST BY
LOOKING AT THEIR FACES.
Entering the 2008 season, two weeks shy of his 42nd birthday (April
14), Maddux had 347 wins—seven behind Roger
Clemens' 354, and 16 behind Warren Spahn's 363, the most wins by a
pitcher since baseball erased the color line. He is the
s****t's quiet electrical hum, a guy who continues to win
games—at least 13 a season for the past 20 years, for the Cubs,
the Braves, the Cubs again, the Dodgers and now the
Padres—despite yielding organically to the muscle-dwindling
effects of middle age.
The Rangers' Josh Hamilton, who spent last season with the Reds, says
Maddux was by far his toughest at-bat. "He never
throws anything the same speed," says Hamilton, who went 0-for-3
against the old guy. "One pitch moves this way, one moves
the other. The radar gun says it's going slow, but it doesn't feel
that way in the batter's box. It drives you crazy."
Padres manager Bud Black says Maddux "has the best feel for how to
throw a pitch and when to throw it of anybody, maybe
ever." Which prompts Maddux to shrug his unimposing shoulders and trot
out the mantra "Whenever you've had a little
success in this game, people think you know more than you do."
Right. But when Brad Penny and Maddux were teammates on the Dodgers,
during the last two months of 2006, they had a
conversation one day that led Penny to reach a stunning conclusion:
This guy knows my stuff better than I do. It was eerie,
really, how easily Maddux dissected Penny's repertoire and suggested
ways to maximize it. Penny, figuring he'd take
advantage of the situation, asked Maddux to call a game for him
against the Cubs. And so, on the night of Sept. 13, Penny
glanced into the dugout before every delivery and found Maddux, who
signaled the next pitch by looking toward different parts
of the ballpark. Penny threw seven scoreless innings with no walks and
beat the Cubs 6-0. "Maddux probably won't tell you
that story," Penny says. He's right.
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DISCLAIMER: Maddux wants nothing to do with the Maddux-as-genius
discussion. In fact, if the topic veers toward the mythical nature of
his achievements, the look on his face turns from mild surprise to
abject befuddlement. When his eyes ask, "Who, me?" you know the
answer: Yes, him.
In person, Maddux is kind of goofy, with a double-chinned, slack-jawed
look of wonder that must be a put-on. Maybe this is
the way of the genius, or the savant. Did Caravaggio have to explain
every brushstroke? Would it have diminished his
achievements if he did? Greg's older brother, Mike, pitching coach for
the Brewers, becomes defensive when asked about
Greg's reticence, saying, "Magicians don't tell everyone their tricks,
do they? I bet David Copperfield would be a tough
interview too."
Self-reflection is not a priority. Maddux has spent his adult life in
the eternal childhood of the big league clubhouse. There's no
other place on earth quite like it. One morning this spring in Peoria,
Ariz., he sat at his corner locker with a plate of bacon and
eggs on his lap, talking about pitching. He was running some sort of
low-stakes golf pool out of the corner of his eye, passing
out papers and collecting money without turning his head. At one
point, in midsentence and without warning, he winced like a
man about to pass a stone, lifted his left cheek off the chair and let
loose. "Whoa, wow, sorry about that," he said, then
continued with the eggs and the discussion and the golf pool. So add
that to the Maddux scouting re****t: bats right, throws
right, farts left.
A great old scout named Doug McMillan, who used to work the Western
states, shot a grainy video of a 19-year-old Maddux
throwing on some field. In the clip, Maddux is wearing high socks, a
foam-front cap and tiny gym shorts, but he's throwing the
exact same way he throws today. You can't see his face, but if you've
watched baseball at all over the past 20 years, you'll see
this 3.5-second video and immediately say, "Maddux." As Greg says, "I
was fortunate to have some success early, so nobody
tried to change me." Typically modest, typically Maddux.
Part of the legend concerns a man named Ralph Medar, a scout who'd
retired and moved to Vegas
to get a handle on his allergies. Medar started a series of
invitation-only pickup games for the best prep players in the area. He
coached Mike and Greg Maddux as well as Mike Morgan, who retired in
2002, after 22 seasons. That's a combined 60 years
of big league pitching experience. Medar (who died before Greg
graduated from high school) taught them all the value of
movement over velocity, how to ****eld the ball behind their gloves to
hide grips and how sometimes a 57-foot curveball is the
best pitch in the world. "We bought into it," Greg says. "One of the
first questions we used to ask was 'Is my ball sinking, or is
it just running?' Now all they ask is, 'Did I throw 92 or 94?'"
Greg got to play in Medar's games when he was 13 or 14. Pro scouts and
college coaches started calling and showing up at
the Maddux house during Mike's senior year. As one of the scouts was
leaving one night, the boys' father, Dave Maddux,
shook the guy's hand and said, "You'll be back for the little one."
You'll be back for the little one. How great is that?
Maybe it was during those pickup games that Greg learned how to pick
up a hitter's tendencies and take advantage of them.
Watch him on the mound, how he throws the ball to a spot and hops to
the right or the left on his
follow-through because he knows that's the direction the ball should
go if everything works as it should. He is a master of
tendencies, sure, but his approach is rooted in an intuitive
understanding of physics and geometry. As former Cub and current
teammate Mark Prior says, "I don't know what it is, but he just knows.
Nobody else knows the way he knows."
"MADDUX HAS THE BEST FEEL FOR HOW TO THROW A
PITCH AND WHEN TO THROW IT OF ANYBODY." BLACK
SAYS. "MAYBE EVER."
Prior is one of several Padres pitchers—Jake Peavy and Chris
Young are also among them—who appreciate
Maddux's willingness to fill in the gaps in their experience. It seems
to be a generational thing. Mike Maddux calls the young
American pitchers coming up through the Brewers' system "academy kids"
because they were taught to play by micromanaging
coaches on travel-ball teams where the fields were always perfect and
the drills always robotic. "All they've been taught is how
to take instruction," Mike says. "We were taught how to play the
game."
One day last summer, Greg called reliever Heath Bell into the film
room. The Padres were playing the Cardinals, and Maddux
wanted Bell to see something he'd picked up from a St. Louis hitter.
"I can't do it, but with your stuff, you can throw your fastball
inside and handle this guy," Maddux told him.
Bell started to answer, "But the scouting re****t says … "
"I don't care about the scouting re****t," Maddux said. "I'm saying
your fastball can get this guy out."
After relaying the story, Bell says, "I listened. I got him out.
Maddux knows best."
With the Cubs, the story goes, Maddux once sat in the dugout and
watched José Hernández of the Dodgers set up in the
batter's box. After two pitches, Maddux turned to the guys around him
and said, "We might have to call an ambulance for the
first base coach." On the next pitch, Hernández whipped a shot that
hit first base coach John Shelby in the chest.
"He does that all the time," Bell says. "He'll say, 'Get ready to
duck,' and two seconds later, here comes the ball."
Maddux waves it all off, of course. "I daydream just like everybody
else," he says. "I just do it with my body facing the field,
so everybody thinks I'm paying attention."
At some point, probably soon, Maddux will be gone, and all of this
will leave with him. He has told some teammates that this is
his final season, which means no run at Grover Cleveland Alexander and
Christy Mathewson, who are tied at 373, and no
crazy notions about joining Cy Young and Walter Johnson in the 400-win
club. "I'm not going to be one of those guys who
pretends it's going to be easy to walk away," he says. "It's going to
be hard, really hard."
Last year, during a series at Dodger Stadium, Maddux and Bell had a
conversation while shagging balls during batting practice.
Bell said something casually to Maddux about the hours he'd spent over
22 years in the big leagues doing that very
thing—shagging balls and tossing them back to the bucket man
behind second base. "You know," Maddux said, "I
really should retire."
Bell, unsure if he was entering into a conversation of historical
im****tance, stayed quiet. What was he supposed to say, really?
But then, after a pause, Maddux picked up another ball and said, "Nah.
Then I'd go home and do what?"
Relieved, Bell agreed, saying, "How could you leave this?" And
together they laughed the whole thing off.
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