‘I just pitch’

by Michael P. Geffner
last revised: October 9, 1995
thesportingnewsLooking way too ordinary for a pitching god, making him the most dangerous optical illusion in baseball, Greg Maddux sits shirtless and deadly calm on a small stool by his corner locker in the Braves clubhouse, his right throwing arm, hanging lifelessly now, wrapped in white towels packed with ice and his free hand fingering the underside of his chin.

The cat-and-mouse act between Maddux and the media is about to begin again, as it does every fourth or fifth day during the season, and, as always, like clockwork, just before the first question’s posed, a look of profound playfulness starts bubbling to the surface of Maddux’s face.

This is a Thursday night at the end of August, after yet another Maddux victory — 5-2 over the Astros, lifting his runaway-train of a record to 15-2 (on the way to his season-ending 19-2 record) — looked as easy as connecting dots, and when already it’s a foregone conclusion that he will, incredibly, win his fourth consecutive Cy Young. Which will give him four and counting at the age of 29!

Tonight, Maddux needed just 91 pitches to flick away the ‘Stros, like he does all teams, as if they were something from a lower league: six hits; one walk; four strikeouts; two hard-hit balls. Which, by now, is nothing but a so-so outing for him. Another yawn. That’s how far Greg Maddux has come.

And, typically, it was a performance fully appreciated only after it was over, when, all at once, you are suddenly struck by the staggering number of soft outs he induced: inning after easy inning of squibbers off the end of the bat; dribblers off the handle; check-swing grounders; half-swing popups; and bat-freezing called third strikes. And, maybe even more striking, is the way he seems to accomplish this without so much as breaking a sweat, so simply, so undramatically, doing nothing more than merely mixing average, slightly above-average, and slightly below-average pitches: an 82- to 86-mph fastball (on the slow radar gun) that he throws 70 percent of the time, a decent slider, a circle-change (his strikeout pitch), a cutter (a breaking fastball to back off lefthanded hitters), and a big, slow nothing of a curve.

But don’t be fooled: The mixture is perfectly calculated and unrelentingly diabotical, striking stunningly, pitch after pitch, at the hitter’s weakest points, straight for the kill — outside corner, inside corner, down and away. And always at different speeds and from that same stripped-down, monotonous delivery. Everything moving dizzily away from the center of the plate. Until the poor hitter can’t even see straight. Until he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The Padres’ Tony Gwynn uses the word “uncomfortable” to describe what it’s like facing Maddux. You never feel like you’re getting in a real good swing,” he says, “a swing you’re happy with, a swing with follow-through. It’s no fun, I can tell you that.”

On gut instincts, guile and beguiling control of all his diving-and-darting pitches — How does he move the ball so well and still throw strikes? — Greg Maddux has become, in every way, the most different-looking great pitcher the game has seen, a seemingly ordinary man who somehow, magically, does extraordinary things, a man so spectacularly ordinary, in fact — 6 feet, 170 pounds; junkfood junkie and golf fanatic; wears Mickey Mouse caps and Bugs Bunny T-shirts; and whose idea of a big night is reaching level 9 on a Sega Genesis game — that it has everyone nuts trying to figure it all out

So here they are again, a dozen or so reporters gathering around Maddux like disciples at a mountainside, waiting once again for the secrets of his power, of how a guy like this can be this invincible for this long.

Maddux offers only a bemused gaze, a curl of his lips and gleam in his eye. He knows all the questions by now, and most of the answers. And he also knows there’ll be no secrets revealed today or any other day. Because pitchers such as Maddux, the ones without a blinding fastball or a drop-off-the-table breaking ball, never really can talk about how they do what they do. And because Maddux is the greatest pitcher of his type in the history of the game, with the most to lose, he therefore is likely to be the most guarded of aU.

So today, as usual, it goes this way.

A radio reporter with a huge grin is the first to cut in: “Greg, how do explain this groove you’re in?”

Maddux pauses a second, stares at the floor, then in a voice so low everyone suddenly leans into him: “I don’t know what a groove is. I really don’t. I just pitch. And I pitch the only way I know how. That’s all I do.”

“The key tonight Greg?” asks another.

“The key tonight?” he says. “The key was making more good pitches than bad ones.”

“And which pitches did you rely on?” another chimes in.

“All of them,” Maddux says with a half-smile as the chain of reporters starts to break.

“So, was there something different about this one?”

“Yeah,” he says, biting his nails now, “I didn’t locate well early. But at least the pitches were down. I got a little lucky.”

Only three reporters remain now, one of whom, a daily newspaperman, asks: “Do you think about the Cy Young, Greg, or 20 wins?”

Maddux, sighing, runs his fingers through his hair, saying, “I don’t think about awards or wins. Maybe after the season I will. Right now I just think about pitching. Thinking about awards and wins won’t help me make good pitches.”

Then there’s this long, uncomfortable pause before: “Do you ever think about this whole streak just stopping?”

Maddux sighs deeper, the melting ice from inside the white towels dripping from his arm to the floor. “I just pitch, that’s all. Mat’s the only thing I know how to do. I don’t know any other way to say it. I just pitch.” He shrugs, exhales a chuckle. “Seriously, I just pitch.”

Maddux, who never wanted — or needed — all this attention and only tolerates it now, on his own terms, nevertheless agrees without a struggle to talk with me on a day between his starts, by his locker after batting practice. Because requests for his time are coming in overwhelming bunches these days, I’m told he has become not only increasingly selective with what he agrees to do — he has been turning down interviews, among other things, left and right — but careful not to let anything interfere with his private time or work schedule, too.

When I arrive at his stall, which is buried like an afterthought in the far comer of the clubhouse, Maddux is hunched over on his stool and sucking on a slice of cantaloupe as if he hasn’t eaten in days. He quickly excuses himself, wipes off and then passes me one of those soft, boyish grins of his, a grin you hardly ever see on a superstar athlete.

He then transforms himself even more completely: He puts on a pair of wire-rim glasses (in place of his contacts) and stuffs a clump of Skoal into his upper lip — two things he never does when pitching but which has the effect now of making him appear somewhat goofy (which he definitely is on off-days) and amazingly down-to-earth (which those around him say he is all the time).

Tom Glavine, Maddux’s teammate, fellow Cy Young Award-winning starter, said to me beforehand, “If you didn’t know Greg was the best pitcher in baseball you’d sweat from the way he acts and talks and walks around the clubhouse that he was the fifth starter hanging by a thread onto the rotation. … I think there’s a part of Greg that not only won’t believe what he’s doing but can’t believe it’

It’s an interesting thought and so, to start things off, I ask Maddux if this is indeed true, if there are ever times he feels the need to pinch himself. He pauses, wrinkling his nose, the way a shy child reacts to a compliment

I never really thought I’d have the success I’m having, no, I didn’t,” he says in his usual low voice, just a decibel above a whisper. “I mean, I always thought I could be a good pitcher, but to have the kind of success I’ve had the last few years, well, it just kind of happened. I don’t think anybody thought I could do this. … I don’t even read stuff about myself. I can’t get caught up in 20 wins or Cy Youngs. And when I catch myself doing that I get on to something else. Because I know it’s only a distraction from what I have to do. I know it could turn in a heartbeat. I’ve been there.”

So, is it difficult to talk about? Is that why you’re so matter-of-fact after victories?

“It’s just that I don’t like to talk about (my success),” he says, spitting some tobacco juice off to the side. “It’s like bragging. I don’t think it’s right to have success and rub it in. You can be a sore winner just like you can be a sore loser, and I try not to be either.”

But how is it that you do what you do when so many others, even those who seem to have more natural ability, fall short?

“It’s like anything else. No matter what the field, some people just do things better than others. That’s just the way it turns out.”

Not that you work harder?

“No, I don’t even consider myself a hard worker. I think because I’ve won a lot of games people feel that I’m doing everything better, that all of a sudden I’m working harder now than everybody else. That’s just not the case. In fact, I don’t think I’m working as hard as when I was younger.” He pauses, spitting again. “But my preparation, that’s a lot better. I’ve learned over the years how to do my preparation better, and I have a lot of pride in it. I don’t do just enough to get by.”

Jim Lefebvre, Maddux’s former manager with the Cubs and now an A’s coach, remembers once in Montreal when he watched Maddux warning up between starts and, curiously, throwing only fastballs inside to an imaginary righthanded batter and changeups down and away. “I finally ask h why he’s doing that,” Lefebvre recalls, ‘and he says, `Because those are the pitches I’ll need against the Phillies.’ I couldn’t believe it. The Philees? We weren’t playing the Phillies for three whole days!”

Preparation? All-Star first baseman Mark Grace remembers when he and Maddux were Cubs teamates and how they went out to dinner in Chicago but ended up watching a piece of a Braves game on a TV by the bar waiting for an open table. “Except Greg didn’t really watch the game,” Grace says. “He zeroed in on the hitters. He watched to see if they were changing their stance during the count, if they gripped their bat differently. And then, when the maitre d’finally tells us our table’s ready, Greg doesn’t budge. `Wait a second,’ he says. `Pendleton’s up. I wanna watch him.’ And he stays glued to the TV until Pendleton’s at-bat is over. Later, when I ask him why he had to watch Pendleton so badly, he says, `Because I may have to get him out in a big situation someday.”

All of Maddux’s teammates know of his unyielding obsession with studying hitters. “He has the ability to read hitters after one pitch,” Lefebvre says. “He can already see what the hitter is trying to do and use that very thing to immediately get him out.” And, all the while, Maddux makes tons of mental notes and scribbles little reminders on scraps of paper. His little black book on hitters? Nothing more than last names and one-line comments on torn-off pieces of whatever paper’s handy at the moment — napkins, envelopes, newspapers. With things written on them like: “Jones … aggressive first-ball hitter, Smith … will chase balls away … Johnson … likes to go the other way…Thomas … dead fastball hitter.”

“It’s all very general,” Maddux says. “And with all the stuff I write down, I still don’t know how I’m going to pitch a hitter until he’s right there in front of me. I pitch the way I see and what I feel and what I remember. It’s almost a reflex by now. And it’s what I think is the best pitch at the time, given the situation, regardless of the hitter’s strength.”

So, in a way, you’re not kidding when you repeat after games that you “just pitch?”

“Well, I think that’s all you can do. To keep things simple. That’s why I can’t think about things like ERAS and innings and wins and the playoffs and Cy Youngs. Because I need to focus on what I do, of the five pitches I throw and how I want to throw them.”

Ask Maddux how often those pitches hit their spots and, with a straight face, he tells you “about a handful” each game. Then ask him how often this season he felt he “had it” and he tells you, unflinchingly, “twice,” one of those being a 1-0 two-hitter over the Cardinals on August 20, a game in which he struck out nine, walked none and needed to throw only 88 pitches, 66 of them strikes. That is as good as I can pitch,” he said afterward, in what for Maddux, amounts to a gush.

“But you never really have it,” he says now, wanting to correct his previous assessment. I’ve never really felt like I did, at least. You’re always searching for something new and better. You’re always trying to learn how to better relax out there and not to get caught up in the outcome of the game. To focus better and make better pitches.”

Maddux gets better and better, and now the only question is whether he can break new ground in the postseason. He is a combined 1-2 with an 8.10 ERA in four playoff starts — two for the Cubs in 1989 and two for the Braves in 1993. This could be his first trip to the World Series, and it’s hard to imagine him suddenly going soft if he gets there. He is too good now, the best righthander in generations. Witness the 18-game road winning streak, a major league record. Witness the 1.63 ERA, which follows a 1.56 last season. Not since Walter Johnson in 1918 and’19 has a pitcher been below 1.80 in consecutive seasons.

“If I never pitched another game,” he says, “I still would’ve gotten a hundred times more out of this game than I ever thought I would. So it’s kinda like I’m playing on extra credit right now. That’s why I think I’m enjoying it so much. I’m enjoying playing now more than ever before.”

So, Greg, give me the lowdown, is there any such thing as a secret to pitching?

“Yeah,” he says, smiling broadly, “Locate your fastball on both sides of the plate and change speeds.”

Gregory, Alan Maddux was the baby of his family, born in San Angelo, Tex., in 1966, seven years after his sister. Terri, and five years after his brother, Mike. His father, Dave, a career military man, retired from the Air Force, where he pitched fast-pitch softball for 22 years (”I was pretty good, I guess,” he says softly), as a senior master in 1979. Greg’s mother, Linda, is a retired accounting supervisor.

Dave Maddux, now a part-time poker dealer at the MGM in Las Vegas, grew up in the farmlands of southern Indiana, an hour’s ride from Cincinnati, and though all through childhood he rooted for the Reds, his favorite player was an East Coast outfielder from the other league, with the then-invincible Yankees of the ’50s and early ’60s. “When I was in high school,” he says, “I even wrote a book report on that player’s autobiography. What really interested me was that he credited his father with making him what he was, and, because of that, believed that ballplayers were really not born but made. That was Mickey Mantle, and I promised myself right then and there that if ever had any boys I’d put that theory to the test and see if that was true.”

Almost from the moment his sons could walk, Dave Maddux was in the backyard playing ball with them. Every day without exception, he’d get home from the base at around 3:30, grab a bat and glove as quickly as he could, and stay out with the boys until dinnertime. Hours upon hours, he played catch with them, hit grounders to them, pitched to them. And he remembers with a chuckle the way little Greg, when he batted, imagined himself as each player in the Big Red Machine lineup, imitating the elbow flap of Joe Morgan, the crouch of Pete Rose, and hitting from whatever side they did.

But before long, in the tradition of Mutt Mantle, Dave Maddux demanded more from his sons than mere child’s play; he wanted them to think like ballplayers. Whether they were in the field or up at the plate, he would give his sons specific game situations, and ask them to think it out: “First and third, one out, what do you do, guys?” And the situations constantly changed,

“It’s why we were always way ahead of the other kids our own age,” says Mike Maddux, a journeyman major league pitcher now with the Red Sox, making him Greg’s potential World Series foe. “By the time we played little League, we were so sound in the basics, we didn’t need to waste time to think like the other kids did, We just reacted.”

“Those boys just took to baseball like ducks take to water,” says Dave Maddux. “They were always the two best and smartest players around. Greg, especially, had this incredible memory, this great memory. You never needed to tell him what to do in a game situation more than once. It was the same when he played cards. He’d play this game, Concentration, where you had to remember where all the cards were, and you could never get anything over on him — ever. After one flip of the card, he knew exactly where it was.”

While Mike was always the easy-going, easy-talking extrovert, Greg was always the painfully understated, small-fry introvert, but between the two there was the most fiercely competitive sibling rivalry — even though the results were often lopsided in Mike’s favor. “Greg grew up in Mike’s shadow,” says their father, “and Greg always struggled just to keep up. But Greg really worshiped his older brother. Mike was always his hero.”

The Phillies drafted Mike in the fifth round when Greg was 16, and that same year Greg became an all-state pitcher for Valley High School, where he often wore a T-shirt that read: “If I Can’t Win. I Don’t Want To Play.” His high-school coach, Rodger Fairless, now with Dearby Green Valley High School, remembers Maddux as unbeatable, confident, competitive and flaky. “Before big games,” he says, “I’d be as tight as could be, and he’d be so loose he’d be horsing around. It really concerned me. I said, `Is this kid even serious about playing? Is this kid ready?’ But it’s just that Greg never showed his emotions. When it was time to play, Greg was always there — very serious, very competitive and very tough. You wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him when he was pitching, whereas away from the game he probably couldn’t lick a soul.”

For the most part, Maddux’s high-school scouring report read: live arm, good competitor, three-quarters delivery, knows how to pitch, but not overpowering enough and way too small. When he graduated, he was just a wiry 5-11, 145 pounds. Baseball people still predicted he’d go in the first round of the draft. Harry Minor’s scouting report for the Mets — according to the 1995 book, “Scouting Reports: The Original Reviews of Some of Baseball’s Greatest Stars” (Macmillan) — read: “Can really project this boy. He should fill out and get stronger. He throws with ease and should have good control.” It said Maddux was worth $50,000. The Mets didn’t take Minor’s word for it. Maddux went in the second, picked by the Cubs after they picked lefthanded pitcher Drew Hall, who went on to become only an answer to a trivia question.

Maddux signed with Chicago for an $85,000 signing bonus, which he promised not to touch until he reached the majors (a promise, by the way, he kept), and after just three minor league seasons, during which he went an eye-catching 33-15 over 65 starts, was promoted to the bigs as a September call-up in 1986. At 20 years old, Maddux became the youngest Cub to appear in a major league game but was so small and young-looking that ace reliever Lee Smith, a 6-6 bruiser, nicknamed him “Bat Boy.”

Maddux finished that first year an upencouraging 24 with a 5.52 ERA but surprisingly opened 1987 still in Chicago, where he developed a quick reputation more as an emotional fireball than as a quality major league pitcher. He frequently — and weirdly — cursed himself with loud one-word obscenities on the mound, argued often with umpires about calls (which led to an early-season ejection) and had a bizarre habit of pointing, jabbering and even yelling at opposing hitters, including an infamous incident with Dave Parker during which he told the hulking veteran star, in essence, to either stop fiddling in and out of the batter’s box or be prepared to duck. Mostly, he simply admonished hitters to: “Swing the bat!” or “Get in the box!”

In the clubhouse, Maddux wasn’t much a shrinking violet either. At the end of one team meeting to go over signs, he stood up abruptly from his locker and piped: “You forgot one of the signs. You didn’t give us the sign for knocking the guy off the plate.”

“What; I saw back then was a guy who wasn’t in control of himself,” Gwynn says. “And I remember thinking, unless he changes, he’ll never control his pitching either. He was making lot of mistakes in the middle of the plate, a lot of mistake hit about.600 off him back then. And I have to admit now, at the time, I didn’t think he’d ever turn out to be very much.”

With a 6-10 record and a 4.91 ERA in early August of ‘87, Maddux finally was sent back to Triple A, a move that neither shocked nor angered him. “I was relieved,” he says. “I was worrying about it for two months. I deserved to be sent down. In fact, I deserved to be sent down much earlier. I was struggling. I forgot how to throw my breaking balls and my changeup. I’d become a one-pitch pitcher — straight fastballs down the middle of the plate. The only experience I was getting was in backing up bases.

“I realize now that I didn’t really understand anything about pitching back then, didn’t really understand anything about acting like a pitcher, and didn’t really understand myself as a pitcher. I was just a brain-dead heaver.”

At Triple-A Iowa, Maddux rejoined his old pitching coach and quasi-guru, Dick Pole, whom Maddux, even when promoted to the Cubs, called several times desperately seeking help.

Pole adjusted the grips on all of Maddux’s pitches, especially his. changeup, and slightly altered the way he stepped in his delivery. Within two weeks, Maddux was back with the Cubs. But after losing his final four decisions, raising his ERA to 5.61, he and Pole decided to continue working together during winter ball in Venezuela. That winter, Pole forced Maddux to throw no fewer than 30 changeups each start.

“Winter ball was big for him,” says Pole, now the Giants’ pitching coach. “He could do the things he wanted to do, and not cause him any consequence. But the biggest thing, he re-did his mechanics of pitching, right from the way he held the ball in his glove when he wound up; he used to turn his hand around in his glove and wind up differently. We changed that. We changed the grip on his changeup a little bit He used to hold it across the seams. He started throwing it with the seams. … He kind of re-thought his style of pitching.”

Maddux returned from Venezuela a different Witcher, going 18-8 with a 3.18 ERA in 1988 and never-having to look back. He followed with a 19-12 and 2.95 ERA in-1989, coming in third in the Cy Young voting; won 15 games with positively dreadful clubs in each of the next two seasons; and went 20-11 with a 2.18 ERA in 1992 to win his first Cy Young. Retired Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg wrote in his recent autobiography that it reached the point where Maddux was so respected in Chicago — and his instincts so revered — that then-inexperienced catcher Joe Girardi allowed him to call pitches in games Maddux didn’t even pitch — with the other pitchers unaware — by devising a secret set of signs. Maddux, of course, denies this vehemently.

He broke from the Cubs because of a contract dispute, became a free agent and signed with the Braves for five years and $28 million. Some players relax with big contracts; he is a combined 55-18 with Atlanta.

“He’s still fired up out there sometimes,” Gwynn says. “But now, he’s in complete control as a pitcher and he hardly ever makes a mistake. He makes you hit his pitch, a pitch in his zone, not yours. I’ve gone from hitting.600 against him to something like. 150. And I have to admit now, that if he’s pitching for his life and I’m hitting for mine, he wins. Yeah, he definitely wins.”

It’s Tuesday night September 5, and Maddux has just beaten the Cardinals for the second straight time this season by a 1-0 score. Only this time, for kicks perhaps, he actually lets them feel as if they had a chance. In the first six innings, he allows them three whole two-on, two-out threats, which seems about three more than his per-game average, but as if merely performing an amusing exercise, he defuses each situation instantly and without a hint of mortal strain: getting a pair of routine, groundouts and a swinging strikeout that had the hitter, Ray Lankford, alternately mumbling and spitting all the way back to the dugout

In the Braves clubhouse afterward, the media once again form a tight semicircle around Maddux’s locker, some even lurching toward him on bended knee, but Maddux, now a mind-numbing 16-2, doesn’t look up until the first question comes.

“So what about the game tonight, Greg?” is the best the first guy, holding a mike and at ready looking defeated, could muster.

Maddux, lifting his head slowly, rolls the question around in his head a second, then: “Well, I hung some changeups and I didn’t throw my slider very well, but I made some pitches when I had to, I guess. But what was big was (catcher) Charlie (O’Brien) calling a great game and the defense playing great behind me. I’m really lucky that I have the defense I do and that I’m able to get the opportunities that pitchers on other teams don’t get.”

He goes on this way for several minutes, taking absolutely no credit for himself but praising nearly the entire rest of the team, including the relievers, who never even appeared. But they were there just in case I needed them,” he adds quickly, sincerely. And just knowing they’re there has made me a better pitcher this year. Those guys have really been great this year. I know now that all I have to do is go as hard as I can for as long as I can. To just think about pitching the best way I know how. To go out there and just pitch.”

And, with that Greg Maddux, the pitching god next door, gently grins his boyish grin and begins peeling off his uniform, having completed yet another game of cat-and-mouse by saving all he really wants to say.

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