In Appreciation of Greg Maddux

Baseball has always been attractive to ordinary people because, on the face of it, ordinary people can play it. This is no longer the case with either football or basketball, which require people of abnormal dimensions. Hockey players, too, are becoming outsized, although the main thing that separates hockey players from ordinary people is the ability to skate. Of course, baseball has its behemoths, such as Frank Thomas, Mo Vaughan, and Jose Canseco, who could easily be mistaken for football players, or Cecil Fielder, who could be taken for a black sumo wrestler, but for the most part baseball players are more or less normal sized for late 20th century adult American males. And unlike football players, especially, and hockey players to a lesser extent, baseball players do not hide their individuality (and their humanity) behind bulky armor.

The primary reason for this, of course, is that for the most part baseball is not a game of size or power, like football or bastketball; it is a game of timing, concentration, and coordination, skills independent of size (which may in fact be hindered by overdevelopment -- you will not, for instance, see a pitcher with arms the size of Canseco's (Canseco's elbow injury while pitching was a direct result of his overdeveloped muscles)). This is, incidentally, why it is silly to bar women from pro ball. In a well-traveled statement, Henry Aaron once said that there is nothing to prevent a woman from being a good second baseman. He should know: his predecessor at second base for the Indianapolis Clowns was a woman.

While this is a general pleasure in baseball, baseball in the 1990s presents the more specific pleasure of watching Greg Maddux pitch. Working this year on his fifth Cy Young, Maddux is simply the best pitcher in the game today, one of the best in my lifetime -- one of the best ever. And he is irredeemably ordinary. You get a peculiar thrill of recognition and fellow feeling when the best pitcher in baseball looks like Rick Moranis, and sounds just like he looks (although he doesn't sound like Rick Moranis). Current styles in uniform and hair help Maddux's colorless anonymity. When he first came up with the Cubs he had long shaggy hair, and in Chicago's early-80's softball uniforms looked like a gawky American Legion pitcher from Iowa. In Atlanta's neo-traditional uniforms and with a short-back-and-sides-haircut, Maddux looks like a junior high math teacher. On days he's not pitching he wears round horn-rim glasses, making him look more like an accountant of the Bob Newhart type.

Maddux is one of those unprepossessing players whose excellence is often overlooked until you see the box score the next day. He gives batters comfortable 0-fers. When Maddux suggested a few years back that Hideo Nomo start the All-Star Game, he was right that Nomo is more entertaining. He was also right when he called Randy Johnson the most dominating pitcher today. He did not suggest, as some have inferred, that either Nomo or Johnson is a better pitcher than he is. Maddux rightly defers judgment, although most observors find it absurd to even consider.

Johnson is an imposing presence on the mound, with his height, his glower, his gunslinger's mustache, his 100 mph sidearm fastball, and his reputation for intimidation. Nomo has a confusing delivery and an explosive splitter, which made him difficult to hit until hitters started laying off the splitter, which is rarely in the strike zone, and waiting on his ordinary fastball). Johnson, Nomo, and Pedro Martinez, the current candidate other than Maddux for Best Pitcher in Baseball, are able to blast their way out of trouble. This makes for exciting baseball. Maddux, on the other hand, knows how to avoid trouble in the first place, which doesn't make for exciting baseball, but does make for excellent pitching. (It also makes for 2-hour games, though that is perhaps beside the point.)

It may be that Maddux's very ordinariness contributes to his stature. Randy Johnson, with his speed and demeanor, ought to be a good pitcher. Maddux doesn't have all that much of a fastball, doesn't really have a curve, isn't impressive-looking on the mound -- he's like Orel Hershiser was a few years ago, but with better control. He doesn't look like a great pitcher, so perhaps he comes off as a greater pitcher than he is simply because he defies expectation.

In any event, we are fortunate to be able to watch, week in and week out, one of the very best at this arcane craft, and to hear him every now and then discuss his craft. For Maddux, like Tony Gwynn, is a superstar who has studied his craft, who thinks about it constantly, who knows the theory as well as the practice. He knows not only how to pitch, but why. He knows not only how he should pitch, but how pitchers in general should pitch. I have no doubt that, ten-twelve years down the road, he will make a fine pitching coach (the only other really good pitcher I can think of who made a good pitching coach was Johnny Sain. Bob Gibson, with the Cardinals and Braves, was, significantly, the attitude coach, not the pitching coach).

Until then, let us enjoy complete games on 95 pitches in under two hours, and nod knowingly when Maddux swears he will walk more hitters this year (meaning about one per game instead of his usual two every three games), and not complain because the best pitcher on your favorite team has no chance at the Cy Young Award. Greg Maddux won't last forever; let's appreciate him at his best.

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