Aging Maddux still a pretty good pitcher
by Ken Sherrington
last revised: March 27, 2007
Dallas Morning News
Veteran’s body may show his age, but his game defies the years
10:58 PM CDT on Tuesday, March 27, 2007
SURPRISE, Ariz. – On a day when the home team gives up three touchdowns and a field goal, the never-ending quest for pitching leads to the visitors’ clubhouse.
But the only person in the room is a middle-aged guy in boxers and an assortment of ice packs, eating a sandwich and watching TV.
Bird legs protruding from a barrel gut, heavy bags under bloodshot eyes, he looks as if he just rolled out after a long night of Texas Hold ‘em.
Look left. Look right.
No one else around.
Pardon me, I whisper, elbowing a reporter, but I’ve only been hanging around the Rangers for much of the last two decades, so I’m not well-versed in the subject.
Is this really what a pitcher looks like?
Prediction: Greg Maddux won’t appear in any underwear ads anytime soon.
But apparently you don’t have to be 6-3 or a phenom or capable of throwing the ball through the wall to win.
Even in his best days, when he was winning four Cy Youngs, Maddux never brought it faster than the upper 80s.
Fastest the gun had him at Surprise Stadium on Tuesday? A rather pedestrian 84 mph.
And yet on a blustery day with winds gusting to 29 mph, when Kenny Lofton camps out in center for a pop-up that lands on the warning track, Maddux shuts down the Rangers on four hits and a couple of runs over six innings.
Five strikeouts. One walk.
“I was just glad to survive,” Maddux says, pitching the last of his sandwich.
“It was a four-club wind out there.”
No one else survives Tuesday. Kevin Millwood? Gone before five are up after yielding 12 hits and nine earned runs.
“I thought Millwood threw great,” Maddux says, taking up for his old Braves teammate before anyone even asks. “The ball looked good coming out of his hand.
“The ball gets up in that wind, a lot of funny things can happen.”
Rangers fans have seen this kind of wind. Ditto on the results.
They do not consider it “funny.”
Funny, though, how the wind doesn’t seem to bother Maddux so much.
“If you pitch your game and don’t vary from it,” Padres manager Bud Black says, “it doesn’t matter if you’re pitching in a hurricane, you’re gonna get results.”
Ron Washington has been preaching this approach to the Rangers’ pitchers all spring. Pound the strike zone, he says. Work fast. Get your defense off the field.
Other than Kameron Loe, though, Washington isn’t getting the same results that Maddux is: 2-0 with a 2.25 ERA.
Hey, Bud: How good has Maddux been this spring?
“He’s been … Greg Maddux,” Black says, smiling.
How many guys would give up their 95 mph fastball to hear their manager say that?
Maddux will be 41 in a couple of weeks. He’s been pitching in the big leagues for more than two decades. Owner of 333 wins. Only once in the last 19 seasons has he not pitched 200 innings, and even then he only came two-thirds of an inning short.
He was supposed to be done when the Cubs got rid of him last year, when his fastball slipped to the mid-80s.
Maddux had no intention of giving in, though. He likes it too much. Likes the competition, the camaraderie, the stupid idea of a good time.
Example: The last time he filled out a questionnaire for the Cubs’ press guide, under hobbies, he wrote, “Farting.”
The Cubs declined to include it in his bio.
Don’t get the wrong idea, though. Pay no attention to the crude humor or couch potato form.
How many pitchers watch other teams take batting practice, looking for weaknesses?
How many guys shout an expletive when the count goes 2-1 in a meaningless spring training game?
How many guys have the guts to go out there with an 84 mph fastball?
Hey, Greg: What’s your pitching philosophy?
“Up and in, down and away,” he says, shrugging. “Locate your fastball and change speeds.
“What everybody else does.”
Not in the other clubhouse.
The comment leaves Maddux momentarily speechless. He looks around for help from the other reporters. No one offers any.
“Millwood’s pretty good,” he says, softly. “He’ll be all right.”
We’ll take a pitcher’s word for it. This one, anyway.
