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Great Athletes

Greg Maddux

by William L. Howard

Sport: Baseball

Early Life

Gregory Alan Maddux was born in San Angelo, Texas, in 1966. Because his father was a career military man, Greg’s family lived in many different places. Greg’s father began teaching him how to play baseball at the age of five. Greg played Little League baseball in Madrid, Spain.

Greg Maddux pitching at Yankee Stadium in the 1996 World Series.

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(Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

In 1984, Greg graduated from Valley High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. During his junior and senior seasons, he was an all-state baseball player. Even then, the key to his pitching was amazing control. Opting not to attend college, Greg was selected in the second round of the 1984 Major League Baseball (MLB) draft by the Chicago Cubs.

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The Road to Excellence

Greg spent three seasons in the minor leagues prior to joining the Cubs in September, 1986. One of the first games that he pitched was against his older brother Mike, who was a rookie pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. The occasion marked the first time that rookie brothers had ever pitched against each other in the major leagues. To his great delight, Greg defeated his older brother.

The 1987 campaign was disappointing for Greg, as he compiled a 6-14 record and a hefty 5.61 earned run average (ERA). Following the advice of Cubs pitching coach Dick Pole to concentrate on making good pitches instead of trying to retire every batter, Greg had an excellent year in 1988. He was selected as a member of the National League (NL) all-star team and finished the season with an 18-8 mark and a 3.18 ERA. Four more excellent seasons ensued with the Cubs, culminating in 1992, when Greg won twenty games and the Cy Young Award.

The Emerging Champion

Greg became a member of the Atlanta Braves when he signed as a free agent after the 1992 season. Joining a pitching rotation that already included Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Steve Avery, Greg soon emerged as the ace of the staff. In 1993, Greg pitched against the Cubs in Wrigley Field on Opening Day and won the game. In his first season with the Braves, he won twenty games, posted a 2.36 ERA, and won the Cy Young Award for the second straight year.

In the strike-shortened season of 1994, Greg won sixteen games, pitched ten complete games, and claimed the Cy Young Award for the third year in a row. No one had previously won the award more than two consecutive years. Greg’s 1.56 ERA set a record for the Braves and was the third best in Major League Baseball since 1919.

Greg had another remarkable year in 1995, compiling a 19-2 record and a 1.63 ERA. He became the first player since Walter Johnson, in 1919, to pitch back-to-back seasons with an ERA below 1.70. For an amazing fourth consecutive year, Greg won the Cy Young Award. According to Greg, his greatest moment in sports came when the Braves won the 1995 World Series. As the Braves defeated the Cleveland Indians for the world championship, Greg pitched a brilliant two-hitter against the potent Indians’ attack in game one. Although the Indians defeated Greg in game five, the Braves won the series in six games.

Although Greg did not win another Cy Young Award, he continued to be one of the finest and most consistent pitchers in baseball. In 1996, he slipped to a 15-11 record but still maintained an excellent 2.72 ERA and helped lead the Braves to the World Series again. In 1997, he compiled a 19-4 record and a 2.20 ERA. The season was the tenth consecutive in which he had won at least fifteen games. In 232 innings pitched, he gave up only 20 walks, 6 of which were intentional. In 1998, he won his fourth ERA title with a 2.22 mark and struck out a career-high 204 batters. He also appeared in his seventh all-star game. The following season, 1999, he won nineteen games and finished the 1990’s with a 2.54 ERA, the third-lowest ERA in any decade since the early 1900’s, behind only Hoyt Wilhelm’s 2.16 and Sandy Koufax’s 2.36.

Greg spent four more seasons with the Atlanta Braves and won another 68 games, before signing with the team that had originally drafted him, the Chicago Cubs. By this time, Greg’s ERA hovered around 4.00, a run and a half higher than in his glory days. However, he was still a pitcher who could be counted on to be healthy, pitch over 200 innings per year, and keep his team in games. He gave the Cubs two and a half seasons before finishing 2006 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He signed with the San Diego Padres for the 2007 season and compiled a 14-11 record and a 4.14 ERA while garnering another Gold Glove Award. In 2008, near the end of the regular season, Greg was traded back to the Dodgers and helped the team clinch a playoff spot. During the playoffs, he pitched four scoreless innings for the Dodgers to wrap up his playing career. After the season ended, he learned that he had won his eighteenth Gold Glove Award, adding to his record number.

Continuing the Story

After announcing his retirement in December, 2008, forty-two-year-old Greg could look back on his playing career with great satisfaction. He had won 355 games, four Cy Young Awards, seventeen Gold Glove Awards, and a World Series Championship. He had also passed Cy Young in the record books by winning at least thirteen games per season for twenty consecutive years. George Castle, in his book Throwbacks: Old-School Baseball Players in Today’s Game, entitled his chapter on Greg “The Smartest Man in Baseball,” a reference to the veteran’s encyclopedic knowledge of opposing hitters. Greg not only studied hitting tendencies in game film, but he also had an uncanny ability to judge what the batter was going to do before he did it. Knowing hitting tendencies, having a fastball with movement, possessing the ability to change speeds, and rarely walking batters all contributed to Greg’s continued success beyond his prime athletic years. Greg once told an interviewer that pitching was simply the art of “messing up” a batter’s timing. Apparently Greg continued to have that artistic touch in his later career. Although he did not dominate the 2000’s as he did the 1990’s, his yeoman’s work and invaluable intelligence and leadership persuaded contending baseball teams to continue to employ the future hall of famer.

Another factor in Greg’s success was physical competitiveness. Greg was arguably the best fielding pitcher ever. From 1990 to 2008, he won the Gold Glove Award for NL pitchers every year except one. He also was one of the best hitting pitchers in the game.

Greg and his wife Kathy, who attended the same high school, became actively involved in community affairs in Las Vegas, starting the Greg Foundation, which was involved in several charitable activities. The couple had two children, Amanda and Chase.

Summary

Greg Maddux has been one of the most durable pitchers in MLB history. With the exceptional movement he put on a baseball and his pinpoint control, Greg was the most dominant pitcher in the 1990’s. An emblem of consistency, he won the Cy Young Award an unprecedented four consecutive years.

Additional Sources

1 

Castle, George. Throwbacks: Old-School Baseball Players in Today’s Game. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2003.

2 

Christopher, Matt. On the Mound with Greg Maddux. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997.

3 

Kisseloff, Jeff. Who Is Baseball’s Greatest Pitcher? Chicago: Cricket Books, 2003.

4 

Saccoman, John. The Most Dominating Starting Pitcher of All Time? Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1998.

5 

Torres, John A. Greg Maddux: Ace. Minneapolis: Lerner, 1997.

6 

Wilbert, Warren N. What Makes an Elite Pitcher? Young, Mathewson, Johnson, Alexander, Grove, Spahn, Clemens, and Maddux. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Howard, William L. "Greg Maddux." Great Athletes,Salem Press, 2009. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Athletes_1121.
APA 7th
Howard, W. L. (2009). Greg Maddux. Great Athletes. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Howard, William L. "Greg Maddux." Great Athletes. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2009. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.