Chicago…

Back from a 10 day vacation in beautiful Chicago, Illinois. Beautiful indeed. It yielded about 200 photos, most of which are probably garbage, but I will be posting anyway (because I’ve been too much of a slacker).

Back to work!

They say life goes on…

Daredevil #63
Supreme Power #12
Ultimate Spider-Man #64

… and I am supposed to believe them.

Hurricane Charley…

The hurricane came last Friday as I sat in my living room and watched the Cubs lose to the Dodgers. I live about 15 minutes from serious hurricane damage, and was expecting the storm to visit my house at any moment. At the end of the day, The Shanty was still standing with only a few broken (large) tree limbs laying lifeless in my yard. I was fortunate.

Not so fortunate were those a short drive from my house. Houses destroyed, power lines downed, cars flipped. My thoughts go out to all those that lost anything in this storm.

An Open Letter to Greg Maddux by Tom Verducci

Dear Greg,

Too bad, but I’m going to say it anyway: Congratulations on your 300th career win.

I know you don’t like people making a fuss over what to you is just another game, just another chance to match wits against big league hitters. You didn’t even come out of the dugout after you earned No. 300 against the Giants last Saturday. I was not surprised. In 23 years of covering major league baseball, I never have come across a player whose ego was more diametrically opposed from his talent than you. You must be one of the most selfless great athletes ever to grace sports.

One of your favorite phrases over the years has been, “I’m on extra credit.” This wasn’t the career the baseball experts had scripted for you — not at 170 pounds and rarely cracking 90 mph with your fastball — nor was it something you counted on yourself. You said it to me again after win No. 299: “I’m on extra credit.” I shook my head and said, “Greg, you’ve been saying that for years.” “And,” you said, “I’ve meant it for years.”

It’s no act. Pitcher Kent Mercker, who was with you in Atlanta and now plays with you on the Cubs (not to mention on countless golf courses, too), told me this: “The most you’ll get out of him is every once in a while he’ll come back to the dugout and say, ‘I made a pretty good pitch there.’ That’s the most I’ve ever heard him brag.”

I remember one time playing golf with you when you stood over a delicate chip shot. Downhill lie. Over a bunker. A piece of green no bigger than a card table on which to land the ball. You looked at me and said, “I don’t have this shot in my bag.” I admired that self-awareness, and the wisdom to know even the greats have boundaries. How rare it is that someone so gifted athletically is so humble. You see the game on a different plane than everyone else. You see the game as Bobby Fischer did a chess board, always at least one move ahead of the rest of us. And yet another gift is that you share that wisdom so readily .

Here’s an example. Remember that great 18-pitch at-bat the Dodgers’ Alex Cora had against Matt Clement this year? Clement kept pumping in sliders, his best pitch, with a 2-and-2 count and Cora kept fouling them off — more than 10 of them — before at last nailing one for a home run. You asked Clement why he threw his best pitch for strikes in that situation. He said that he had just walked the previous hitter and he did not want to go to a full count, lest he walk another batter. You explained that 2-2 is a pitcher’s count, and the hitter is going to take a defensive posture, ready to fight off any pitch. But at 3-2, you said, the hitter is back to being aggressive, reading fastball first and reacting to other pitches as a Plan B; 3-2 is more of a hitter’s count. So don’t be afraid of 3-2, because nine out of 10 times, you said, you can exploit the hitter’s aggressiveness. “I guarantee you,” Mercker told me, “Matt Clement will win games just because of what Greg has told him. I’ve already seen him make adjustments just because of that one at-bat and his conversation with Greg about it.”

People have sworn for years that you used to throw balls on purpose just to set hitters up, especially to get to 3-2. They still talk about how you once did that to Dave Martinez, then with the Giants, with the bases loaded, no less. You missed with a pitch to get to a full count, and Dick Pole, your former and present coach with the Cubs, said out loud in the dugout to himself, “Here comes the changeup.” You threw the changeup, of course, and a stunned Martinez missed it for strike three.

Of course, you would never admit to such tactics. David Copperfield never wrote a tell-all book, either, did he? It’s still fun for you, that much is clear. And not just every fifth day. The four days in between are still a blast for you. On a recent trip to Philadelphia, you ran down balls in the outfield during batting practice, then drove the ball boy bonkers with your throws back to him. You’d load up a spitter, and it would move so much he couldn’t catch it. Or you’d wait until you had two baseballs and throw one high and soft to him, and as he watched that one, you’d bounce a low one at his feet. One of those throws clanked off his shins, and both of you laughed like a couple of kids at recess.

I know you can’t be this good this long at something if you don’t have a true passion for it. Of that no one could doubt you. I look around baseball and don’t see another Greg Maddux or any gifted young pitcher who is reasonably close to the same kind of style you mastered: “Make the strikes look like balls and the balls look like strikes.” As you said, “Radar guns weren’t as popular when I was drafted as they are now. Now if you don’t throw 95 [mph] you’re a wimp. If you’re not 6-4 with a 90-plus fastball, you’ll never get drafted.”

Maybe your buddy, Tom Glavine, another good guy who is easy to root for, wins 300. You’d have to be a grinch not to want to see Glavine get there. But there are no guarantees. It might not ever happen again in our lifetimes, while the 500 home run club becomes about as exclusive as the AAA auto club. And yet the milestone came and went quietly, with none of the commotion that accompanied Roger Clemens, Tom Seaver or even Don Sutton and Phil Niekro. I asked you how that could possibly be; how a milestone so rare could slip below the national sports radar. “Because I want it that way,” you said. “I don’t want anything to interfere [with pitching]. Whether it’s 208 or 310, nothing changes. It’s just a number. The most important thing is how I go about my business, how much fun I have out there . . . making the most out of my opportunity. That’s what’s important, not a number.

“In this game, you’re only as good as your last game, no matter what you’ve done. If you don’t perform, you’re gone. You may get more chances because of what you’ve done [in the past], but you’ve still got to do it. I’ve seen a lot of great players get fired.”

If that’s true, I asked you, how can you still have fun all these years later when it’s your turn to pitch? “It’s more stressful,” you said, “but it’s a welcome kind of stress. If you didn’t have that stress every fifth day baseball wouldn’t be fun. If it wasn’t hard to win a game, it wouldn’t be fun.” Of course, the beauty of what you’ve done is you’ve made it look easy. Those that make the difficult look easy are the true geniuses of sports. And those that do so with humility are rare treasures.

So no one should be surprised that you didn’t come running out to the field after the last out of your 300th win. You wouldn’t do it for No. 179, for instance, so why should this one be different? Well, it’s different for the rest of us. It’s a chance for us to say congratulations. And thank you.

Sincerely, Tom Verducci

Comics are for losers…

like me.

Powers #3
The Punisher #10

A nice, small week to help my wallet feel better about its emptiness. Powers is a great book, one of my favs… Blah.