The Greatest Living Pitcher

The first baseball game I ever watched was Game 1 of the 1995 World Series. Greg Maddux was pitching for Atlanta. He was facing the Cleveland Indians, who had one of the greatest lineups ever assembled. And Greg Maddux, maybe 6 feet tall and a doughy 180 pounds, pitched a complete game, allowing only 2 hits, setting down the Indians in about two and a half hours.

In his good days, this was an unconscionably long game. I remember some Maddux games where he would throw a shut-out using a mere 79 pitches. The game would be over in under two hours. He'd have seasons where he'd have half as many walks as starts. It's almost like he was racing through the lineup, and couldn't be bothered by deep counts, just so he could go play some golf.

Once, I remember watching him throw one of those mythical three-pitch innings. Ground to second. Pop-out to third. Another grounder to second. I couldn't have done that on the Playstation if I tried. Reggie Sanders barely had time to get out to Left Field and already the inning was over.

Today, Greg Maddux retired from the sport of baseball. And God, I'm going to miss watching him pitch.

He was my favorite player growing up, and always has been, despite him leaving the Braves for points west. I blame this entirely on his delusional agent, Scott Boras, and will gladly rant for an hour about Maddux's departure from Atlanta, which did not need to happen. But such is the sport of baseball, and we all move on.

Maddux was the best pitcher of this generation, and is up there in the top five for pitchers of any and all generations. He didn't have the most electric stuff, but he could pitch and, by God, he was smart. Listening to him talk about baseball is like hearing Jesus talk about the Bible. And the stories about him -- that one in particular is worth reading -- as well as the accounts of his brilliance, are all priceless.

I watched a lot of Braves games and I would get a kick of TBS showing the dugout on days that Maddux was not pitching. And almost every pitcher in the dugout would be either next to Maddux or close to him, and he'd be talking pitching. And then, when the inning was over and the Braves were up to bat, whoever the pitcher was that day, from a John Smoltz to a Tom Glavine, would go and sit next to Maddux and listen to him explain how they could be better. He was like an oracle out there, just pouring wisdom, and his teammates were his disciples. Even the coaches were transfixed. The reporters too. Here. Here. Here. Just about everywhere. They even gave him a standing ovation today at his press conference where he announced his retirement.

And watching him pitch might not have had the punch of watching Randy Johnson pitch. If Randy Johnson was like Jackson Pollock, Maddux was like Da Vinci. Precise and efficient and subtle. But, once you take a step back and take a good look, a real good look, where you squint and tilt your head a little, you're suddenly blown away. Because what you just saw is an absolute masterpiece of a career. Nobody -- nobody -- has been able to master their craft in quite the way that Maddux did, to do something so well for so long that we all took excellence for granted.

In five years he is going to be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame, likely as the first player to garner a well-deserved 100 percent of the vote for induction.

And I'm sorry if this post has rambled. I know I sound like that guy you see at the bar, watching and cringing at some imitation of baseball, perhaps a Royals-Pirates game, and telling the bartender -- he's the only one who will listen, and will only do so because I've purchased almost a dozen beers already -- talking about baseball in the times when men were men and baseball players hustled and didn't cotton to any of the steroid nonsense.

But I hope you'll forgive me. Because Maddux really was the best, and baseball is less rich now than it was yesterday. I wish he would have held on one more year, just so he and Glavine and Smoltz could have strolled into Cooperstown together, the Big Three of the greatest rotation baseball has had the pleasure to see. But I guess, in five years, when Greg Maddux goes in first, immortalizing the greatest living pitcher will have to suffice.