Mad Dog 20-20, retirement edition

Greg Maddux dominated hitters throughout his Hall of Fame career, especially during his 11-year stretch with the Atlanta Braves from 1993-2003. AP

LAS VEGAS -- Here's an underrated great part of my job: The mail. Every week, more or less, I will get two or three great things in the mail. Often it will be a fun book -- like I got this terrific book the other day called, Odd Man Out, by (apparently) a brilliant reader of this site named Matt McCarthy. Matt is now an intern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, but the book is about the 15 games he pitched in the minor leagues in 2002, and how they altered his life. That's a hard kind of book to write ... I've read quite a few failures on that front. But this one is outstanding.

Sometimes, I will get a Bruce Springsteen bootleg CD in the mail. People in the Springsteen community are VERY generous folks. Sometimes I will get a newspaper clipping or an old Duane Kuiper baseball card or an old Cleveland Browns media guide or a chippy letter from Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson. I've gotten packages of pasta in the mail (don't ask) and a bouquet of flowers (DEFINITELY don't ask) and complete set of Baseball Joe books* from the 20th Century.

*I have never read the books, but I just popped on to the Baseball Joe Wikipedia page ... and it says this: "The books are marked by a pervasive anti-Semitism; Joe's most persistent enemy is Jewish and over simply referred to as "the Jew." Great! Wikipedia is never afraid to give it to you straight. Guess I'm leaving those books in the old box.

Perhaps the coolest thing I've gotten in the mail recently was a little package from a brilliant reader (I cannot find the name, but thank you) that had a DVD in it, simply marked:

Braves
vs
Yankees
2 July 1997

In case you missed it, I wrote a post on that game not all that long ago. That was my favorite ever Greg Maddux game. And yes, I do rank my Greg Maddux games ... well, Maddux was my favorite pitcher (non-childhood division).

I have tried a few times to explain the Maddux Connection ("the lovers, Greg Maddux and me") and have never done much of a job. I think it's like this: There are athletes you admire, athletes who astound you, athletes you just want to succeed for any number of reasons. But then there is another kind of athlete, and though it's hard to put into words, I suspect you will know what I mean: There are athletes who are just with you on the field. You have that direct line. You plot with them, you anticipate their moves, you sense their feelings ... or anyway, you think that you do.

I remember I used to feel that way as a kid about Brian Sipe when he was the quarterback of the Cleveland Browns. Sipe was this California surfer dude who had about the weakest arm of any starting quarterback in NFL history -- he would throw footballs and the wind would catch them and blow them backward. It was like he was throwing one of those cheap-looking air-filled gum-drop balls you always see in the 10-foot high wire baskets at every toy store -- by the way, how exactly are you supposed to get one of those balls out of there without going through some elaborate, steal-the-keys-off-Barney's-belt scheme where you stick your arm into the cage and try to work the ball up and then throw it through the top opening?

Sorry. Distracted. One thing about Brian Sipe though: The guy would do anything he could to beat you*. And after a while I started to feel like I was on the same wavelength as Brian -- I could kind of feel when he would get hot, could kind of feel when he was getting frustrated, could sense in a heightened way what was going on with the guy -- I hope this isn't sounding weird and Star Warrish ("He's my ... brother"), I just believe there are certain players in our lives we just GET.

*I am still convinced that Sipe ran the tightest two-minute drill in football history. Sipe would always seem to make the right decisions, he would always make the quick and smart throw to the sidelines, he would get his teammates lined up almost instantly, he NEVER wasted time at the line calling some new play or barking out signals (he would just step to the line and say "Hike" and the ball would snap back). He spoiled me, really; to this day I cannot STAND watching sloppy two-minute drills and to be honest they're ALL sloppy two-minute drills to me. Sipe didn't always win in the two-minute, he didn't even MOSTLY win in the two-minute, but he won enough and even when he failed it was always a valiant effort. Well, all except one.

Maddux was like that for me. I never presumed to think with Maddux or have a deeper understanding of why he was so good. I just loved watching him pitch, loved the whole scene, loved seeing the frustration batters would show, loved the way umpires over the course of a game became willing co-coconspirators, loved the way catchers would just let the ball tumble into the glove without moving, loved the way Maddux would fidget when he didn't have all of his stuff working, loved it all. He was Mozart, I was Salieri, and no I couldn't reproduce it, no I couldn't get close to it, but I felt like I could hear the music.

Of course, it has been more than 11 years since I saw that 1997 game, and it has been almost as long since I saw THAT Greg Maddux pitch. The last six years Maddux was OK, an average pitcher some years, a little better than average others, and he would show a few hints of his younger self. I always admired Maddux for continuing to pitch as long as he enjoyed it, as long as he felt like himself out there, but let's not kid anybody: Six years is a long time. Six years takes young baseball fans from 10 to 16 -- and I suppose those young baseball fans wonder what's the big deal about the guy. They can appreciate that he was crafty -- the rare crafty righty. They can appreciate that he had great control. They can even appreciate the amazing numbers if they care enough to look them up -- 127-53, 2.15 ERA from 1992 through '98, and a 191 ERA+ over that time period, just as baseball was going home run mad. Nobody -- not Clemens, not Unit, not Pedro, not Cone, not Glavine, had ANYTHING CLOSE to a 191 ERA+ over those seven years.

ERA+ from 1992 through 1998 (minimum 1,000 innings pitched)
1. Maddux, 191 ERA+ (1,675 IP)
2. Clemens, 153 ERA+ (1,490 IP)
3. Unit, 146 ERA+ (1,370 IP)
4. Pedro, 145 ERA+ (1,146 IP)
5. Kevin Appier, 141 ERA+ (1,265 IP)
6. David Cone, 141 ERA+ (1,379 IP)
7. Tom Glavine, 137 ERA+ (1,533 IP)
8. Kevin Brown, 135 ERA+ (1,568 IP)
9. John Smoltz 129 ERA+ (1,495 IP)
10. Mike Mussina, 129 ERA+ (1,481 IP)

Now, of course, I'm cherry-picking Maddux's best years, but the point is not to say that Maddux was BETTER than any of those other pitchers -- pick other years and Pedro or Clemens or Unit could be out front -- no, it's only to say that for those seven years he was dominant in a way that is probably very hard for a young fan to understand. How did he do it? And I suspect it's probably not especially revealing to talk again about how smart he was, how well he broke down hitters weaknesses, how brilliantly he strategized, how much his pitches moved. Sure those things are true ... but HOW did he do it?

I went back to the video. And I studied that amazing 1997 game against the New York Yankees pitch by pitch.

The Yankees lineup that day, just as background:

Derek Jeter, ss
Joe Girardi, c
Paul O'Neill, rf
Cecil Fielder, dh
Tino Martinez, 1b
Wade Boggs, 3b
Hard hittin' Mark Whiten, lf
Chad Curtis, cf
Pat Kelly, 2b
Bernie Williams, ph

A few tidbits: Tino had 28 home runs at the time -- there was this rumbling that he could break Maris' record. ... Bernie was coming off a hamstring injury; he was in the middle of his greatest season to that point. This was his first game back and he only pitch-hit in the ninth ... Jeter was not an icon yet, it was only his second year, and he looks very young and easily frustrated ... They had AFLAC Trivia questions but the duck had not yet become the company symbol ... Dwight Gooden was pitching for the Yankees and he pitched quite well.

And here's are the main pitches Greg Maddux threw:

1. His patented fastball. From here on I will refer to it simply as "patented." That was a fastball that Maddux would throw on the outside corner (or off the outside corner, not that the umpires always made that fine distinction). He threw it somewhere in the 85 mph range -- often quite a bit slower -- and it really flopped around, lots of movement, so it looked like he was throwing a wiffleball. Sometimes it was more changeup than fastball, sometimes more cutter than fastball; it was really a Transformers pitch. But the important thing is he threw it on the outside corner, both sides of the plate, and as you will see, he threw it A LOT.
2. Fastball up and in. This was his fastball, only he threw it a little harder and he really got it up into a batter's grill ... with the batter looking outside for that patented fastball, they would jam themselves in very comical ways.
3. Fastball in. He didn't throw this that often, but it might have been his most effective strikeout pitch. He would throw it WAY in, batters would give up on it, the ball would come back over the inside corner of the plate (or close enough) and the umpire would ring 'em up. Maddux would occasionally throw the cut fastball in to right-handed batters for the same effect.
4. Circle change. This looked a lot like the cut fastball only it would be slower and do even more wiffleball-type things, including dive out of the strike zone like it had fallen into a manhole. Maddux mixed it in so seamlessly that even on replays it was sometimes hard to determine what was the fastball and what was the change-up.
5. Curveball. He didn't throw it much, but when he did throw it the ball started high and then took the roller coaster down. Almost impossible to hit unless Maddux hung it ... the best thing to do was recognize it and not swing.

That was about it -- five pitches, though his pitches often blended --cutters that could be called sliders and fastballs that could be called change-ups and whatever else. He really was a mad scientist out there. But essentially it was those five pitches, and really it was almost always Pitch 1 or Pitch 2.