Greg Maddux Vanishes Into the Night

↵Dominant ol’ Greg Maddux, perhaps the best pitcher of the ‘90s and ‘00s, will announce his retirement on Monday. Despite being less explosive, less spectacular and of less attention-girding locales than contemporary Roger Clemens, it seems Maddux has a strong shot to be considered the tops of this era. For what it’s worth, Maddux passed Clemens on the all-time wins list this season, finishing up with 355 to Clemens’ 354.
↵
↵Craig Calcaterra of Shyster Ball has a great account of a twilight era Maddux performance. Of course, that was the beauty of Maddux’s style: it got better with age, to a point. Rockets lose their fuel, but Maddux could send a ball through an onion ring in perpetuity. This is the part that infuriates opposition fans (guilty): no one can nail a spot pitch after pitch after pitch ... so the strike zone must be wide. The Maddux Strike Zone, if you will.
↵
↵A poster at Baseball Think Factory pulled out an astounding number (among an encyclopedia of great Maddux numbers): Mad Dog finished with only 999 walks in more than 5,000 innings. That explains it all, right? Just impeccable control, which may not draw exclamation marks as readily as a 98 mph heater or a 12-6 curveball but gets the job done on a more consistent basis for a long, long time.↵