Maddux, Gregory Alan

▪ 1996

      Greg Maddux of the Atlanta Braves established himself in 1995 as the best pitcher of his day and one of the greatest in baseball history. Maddux won the National League's Cy Young Award—given annually to the league's top pitcher—for the fourth consecutive year. Only one other pitcher had won four Cy Young Awards, and none had ever won the award more than two years in a row. In leading the Braves to the National League pennant, Maddux won a league-best 19 games while losing only 2. His league-leading earned-run average (ERA) of 1.63, along with a 1994 mark of 1.57, made him the first pitcher since the legendary Walter ("Big Train") Johnson in 1918-19 to post an ERA of less than 1.80 in consecutive seasons. At 1.8 m and 77 kg (6 ft and 170 lb), Maddux was smaller than the average ballplayer. He did not have a blazing fastball or a devastating curve; instead, he was able to dominate hitters by studying their tendencies and then baffling them with the amazing accuracy and varying speeds of his pitches.

      Maddux was born on April 14, 1966, in San Angelo, Texas. From a young age he and his older brother, Mike (who also became a major league pitcher), were drilled in the fundamentals of the game by their father. Greg earned all-state honours in both his junior and senior years as a pitcher for Valley High School in Las Vegas, Nev., and upon his graduation in 1984 he was drafted by the Chicago Cubs and assigned to the minor league system.

      Late in the 1986 season, Maddux, just 20 years old, was called up to the big leagues. His performance that season (two wins, four losses, 5.52 ERA) and the next (6-14, 5.61) was anything but masterful. Known as an overly emotional player who often taunted umpires and opposing hitters, Maddux, by his own later admission, was not a thinking pitcher but a "brain-dead heaver." All that began to change, however, when he adjusted the mechanics of his delivery. In 1988 he won 15 of his first 18 decisions and finished 18-8 with a 3.18 ERA. In 1989, as the ace of the Chicago pitching staff when the Cubs won the East Division crown, he went 19-12 with a 2.95 ERA. The next two seasons, pitching for losing teams, he won 30 games and lost 26. In 1992, with a 20-11 record and a 2.18 ERA, Maddux won his first Cy Young Award.

      A contract dispute with the Cubs left him a free agent, and he signed a five-year, $28 million contract with Atlanta. Maddux then went to work to dispel the notion that high salaries ruined players' incentive to perform; during the first three years of his contract, he won the Cy Young Award three times while compiling a 55-18 record. At the age of 29 and with a large part of his career still ahead of him, Maddux was already virtually assured of a spot in baseball's Hall of Fame. (ANTHONY G. CRAINE)

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