My dog is dying. He’s ten years old–not that old for a wheaten terrier, but not young for any dog–and suffering from inoperable abdominal tumors. He has good days and bad, days he can eat and days he doesn’t. His spine has become a spiky ridge leading to the increasingly protruding hip bones. I’ve had to carry him up and down the steps on more than one occasion, but recently he’s rallied–though as I write this he’s staggering around and losing his footing on the wood floor after barking at the doorbell. I thought we were going to have to put him down a couple of weeks ago, but he came back from that and then from another, milder episode. The vet says he’s not in terrible pain, so each good day, every wag of the tail, is worth it. How strange for such a sweet dumb brute to offer a poignant reminder to take things one day at a time.
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All this comes to mind, of course, because Greg Maddux returned to town this spring to pitch for the Cubs, his original team, with whom in 1992 he won the first of his four straight Cy Young Awards. Then he left for Atlanta. Such departures are known to cause grudges on the part of fans, but Maddux proved immune to them. It was commonly reported that he had agreed to a long-term deal with the Cubs only to have the Tribune Company honchos yank it off the table; so when push later came to shove and he signed with Atlanta to play for more money with a better team–a team he helped to the 1995 world championship–few held it against him. Cubs management and the Tribune Company, not Maddux and his agent, Scott Boras, caught most of the blame. Maddux went on to establish himself as the best National League pitcher of his generation, all the more admirable for doing it with guile–throwing a darting array of twisting, turning pitches at various speeds and to precise locations, punctuated by his masterful quasi-palmball of a changeup, which typically wandered up to the plate like some character from Alice in Wonderland, saying, “Hit me,” only to drop out of sight as if down a rabbit hole.
This was widely cheered by Cubs fans, myself included. It was a sentimental move, bringing Maddux home to win his landmark 300th game–he opened the season with 289 career victories–but it also made sense to hire a savvy veteran to temper the youthful promise of Prior, Kerry Wood, Carlos Zambrano, and Matt Clement. Still, I remembered the moment in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the schoolteacher says she’ll follow them anywhere, but she won’t watch them die. No matter how things went, this contract would likely cover the end of Maddux’s career.
From there, Maddux made it look easy. Todd Walker rewarded him with a solo homer in the bottom of the third, and Maddux coasted through seven innings before turning the game over to the bullpen for a 3-1 victory–the 290th of his career, and the first in his second tour with the Cubs. With Maddux righted, everything seemed to settle into place. Prior was cleared for the next step in his rehabilitation, a return to Arizona to face live hitting in extended spring training, and the next day Wood and two relievers combined on a 3-0 shutout. Talk in the media interview room afterward was about nothing so much as how calm, composed, and confident the Cubs all seemed, how they talked little and simply went about their business–qualities Maddux brings to the team, though in all fairness it’s an attitude Prior has as well. When Clement came out and completed the sweep of the Mets on Sunday with a 4-1 triumph, the Cubs had won six straight and led the NL Central at 12-6, as good a start as they could have hoped for sans Prior. One more thing was worth noting. Maddux’s 290th win came on Wrigley Field’s 90th anniversary. It was on April 23, 1914, that what was then known as Weeghman Park was christened in a Federal League game. With 38,862 on hand to see Maddux redux, the Friendly Confines seemed as vital as ever–ageless, classic, youthful–with its best days still ahead.
