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GREATEST PITCHER I EVER SAW RETIRES TODAY

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By now you know that Sir Greg Maddux will be announcing his retirement today. A whole site can be devoted to his accomplishments, but I’ll just run down a few: 355 wins. Over 5000 innings pitched. 23 seasons in the bigs. 4 Cy Youngs. 18 Gold Gloves. Led the league in innings pitched for 5 consecutive years. Was an All-Star in 3 different decades. World Series champion.

I wasn’t old enough to drive when my beloved Cubs brought him to the bigs at age 20. He’ll retire just months before my 20-year high school reunion. And though there haven’t been as many championships as Chicagoans would have liked (insert Cubs joke here I suppose), there have been some of the greatest to ever play. Payton, Jordan, Sandberg, Thomas, Pippen, Fisk and of course, Maddux. I once saw him pitch a complete game with just 76 pitches. That was against the Cubs.

So a tip of the hat and sincere thanks to the greatest pitcher that I ever saw. We can now wait for his induction to baseball’s Hall of Fame. It will be interesting to note which moron decides not to put him on the first ballot. If he doesn’t get 100% of the votes it’s a shame.

Posted by admin on Monday, December 8, 2008 at 7:46 am 
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  • Schmidty

    Amen. I got to meet him and his family at a Cubs employee family picnic (my Uncle worked for the Cubs and I got to go as his “son”). There weren’t supposed to be any players actually there but almost every one of them came out with their families and mingled with the “regular” folk like me. He was so unassuming and normal, even to a 17 year-old. And while this was before all the greatness, sounds like he never changed. It was always nostalgic to see him throw…I’ll miss that. But I may pencil in July of 2013 for my next trip to Cooperstown!

  • dhaab

    You actually think he’ll be a first ballot HOF’er? (kidding)

    I’m going to assume you didn’t want to blog something negative, so I’ll just write the names Scott Boras and Larry Himes and leave it at that. (wink)

  • http://zonersports.com The Zoner

    For cry pie, must you tarnish even this? LOL. Maybe Maddux can help the Trib out of bankruptcy.

  • Big D

    There is no reason why Maddux should not be a unanimous pick for the HOF. It irritates me that some of these writers will not select anyone on a first ballot. Anyone that does not vote for Maddux on the first ballot should be castrated.

    Maddux was remarkable for for about 10 years of his career, and just plain great for the others. He mastery of his craft was second to none, and his career was simply the best I’ve seen.

  • Big D

    One more thing. Do any of you kids remember who broke into the majors in 1986 with Maddux and the Cubs? Jamie Moyer.

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