Heady Stuff

Episodes of Maddux's clairvoyance, however, continue to abound. Last week before his start in Milwaukee, he shouted to Pole in the clubhouse, "Hey, what's Brady Clark hitting with runners in scoring position?"

"How the hell do I know?" Pole replied.

"Well, find out for me, will you?" Maddux said.

Pole tracked down and passed along the information: The outfielder was hitting .226 with runners in scoring position. That night Maddux pitched around slugging first baseman Lyle Overbay with a runner on second and Clark on deck, then whiffed Clark on a changeup. "He knew which hitter he wanted to face if that very situation came up," Cubs lefthander Kent Mercker said afterward. "He doesn't miss anything."

Maddux lives for such moments, like a chess grandmaster who has specific killer moves cataloged in his head and finds utter joy when the board suddenly presents the perfect opening to employ one. Three hundred wins? It is just a number to him right now. That is not why he pitches. He pitches for the intellectual and physical challenges, the small moments that go unseen by most.

Asked to explain the best part of pitching, Maddux says, "I enjoy watching the other guys, talking on Monday [about a game plan] and trying to do it on Tuesday. Guys who just show up on Tuesday and pitch, I don't understand that.

"The best part? The best part is knowing on Monday you're going to do something and then actually doing it on Tuesday. You know what? It might be just a strike. It might be a foul ball, [telling yourself,] If I throw this guy this pitch, he's going to hit it foul right over there. And then to go out there and do it, that's pretty cool. To me, that's fun.

"You're only talking about 10 pitches a game where that may happen. The other 80 or 90 pitches you're trusting what you see and what you feel. It's still just fun playing the game."

It's still so much fun that he cannot yet imagine it ending. "Who knows?" he says, when asked how long he will pitch. "As long as I can do it. I don't want to embarrass myself, by any means. But I'd rather pitch bad than not pitch at all."

There's one thing I've learned about Greg Maddux," Cubs manager Dusty Baker says. "He shags better than anybody I've ever seen. I don't see him out there running foul poles, but I see him out there getting his running in shagging."