Remembering Greg Maddux

There's a reason that so many good pitchers are coming up now, and it has to do with the time in which they grew up. The nineties were prime time for nasty pitching, and there was nobody better in the nineties than Greg Maddux.

Throwing in an era in which 200 wins were rare, he won 355, despite the strike shortened seasons of 1994 and 1995, when he was in the prime of his career. People often describe him as a control pitcher--by which they usually mean that he relied on his reputation for throwing strikes to get guys out. But it was well deserved. He threw 3,000 strikeouts before giving up 1,000 career walks--one of handful of guys ever to do that.

The best compliment a ballplayer can get is being hated by opposing fans, and there are very few National League fans except those whom Maddux played for that do not hate Maddux with an unending passion. Maddux made one of the hardest things in the world to do look easy--throw strikes, get outs and win games. One knock on Maddux is that he has never been a National League MVP, NLCS MVP or World Series MVP. But I'd have taken Maddux anyday over some of the pitchers that did earn those titles, like Jose Rijo or Livan Hernandez.

Maddux typifies what has drawn so many young athletes--and people in all walks of life--to want to be major league pitchers--an almost zen like ability to, despite an average fastball, to make major league lineups look foolish. Babe Ruth--despite being a snub-nosed, cigar-chomping beefcake--inspired people to be home run hitters because no one has ever been able to hit the ball like he did. Greg Maddux inspired people to be pitchers.

Three perfect games were almost thrown within the space of a month this year. People are asking if its the post-steroid era or if it's the pitching--but it has to be both. Just coming into their own now are guys that grew up in the mid to late nineties, when Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, David Cone, Andy Petitte, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine were all pitching at the same time. These guys grew up believing that the coolest thing in the world to do was make a major league lineup look foolish, and no one made major league lineups look as foolish as Greg Maddux.

Of course, these things swing like a pendulum does, and it can't last forever. Only those guys that are coming into the prime of their careers in the next couple of years were shaped by the mid to late nineties. The steroid era cheapened the game, made it less pure. I'm not sure you can find a young kid today as shaped by a baseball player as any guy 23-30 was--and it was probably a pitcher. They want to be Lebron James now, just like when Lebron James was a child every guy wanted to be Jordan. That's what happens when guys make very difficult athletic feats look pedestrian.

Greg Maddux made one of the most difficult things in the world to do for a long period of time look so easy, it sometimes took only eighty pitches to do it.