Greg Maddux
The Professor: control pitcher with 355 wins, a record 18 Gold Gloves and four straight Cy Young Award wins.
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via Wikipedia: Greg Maddux · see source
Gregory Alan Maddux, born April 14, 1966 and nicknamed "Mad Dog" and "the Professor," pitched 23 seasons in Major League Baseball, mostly for the Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves. He was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award four years running (1992–1995), going 75–29 with a 1.98 ERA across that stretch. An eight-time All-Star and 1995 World Series champion with Atlanta, he won more games in the 1990s than any other pitcher and ranks 8th all time with 355 victories. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014, his first year on the ballot, with 97.2% of the vote.
Lore & Background
Born in San Angelo, Texas, Maddux spent much of his boyhood in Madrid, Spain, where the Air Force had posted his father. Back in Las Vegas, he and his brother Mike trained under former scout Ralph Meder, who taught that movement and location matter more than speed.
Scouts doubted his slight build, but Cubs scout Doug Mapson rated him highly, and Chicago drafted him in the second round in 1984. He debuted on September 3, 1986 as the youngest player in the majors. After a rough 1987, he became an All-Star in 1988 and won his first Cy Young in 1992 with 20 wins, before signing a five-year, $28 million deal with the Braves.
Did You Know?
- A complete-game shutout in under 100 pitches is called a "Maddux"; he did it 13 times, the most since pitch counts began in 1988.
- After Will Clark seemed to read his lips in the 1989 playoffs, Maddux always covered his mouth with his glove on the mound.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Greg Maddux (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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