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Friday, May 2, 1997
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Cy Young no bother to Maddux
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Pitcher focuses on next game instead of award
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By PAUL NEWBERRY AP Sports Writer
He prefers to focus on the minutiae of pitching: the next team, the next hitter, the next pitch.
On this day, relaxing in the Atlanta Braves clubhouse between starts in a season that has already shown Cy Young-like brilliance once again, Maddux refused to let the conversation shift to large, sweeping goals.
ATLANTA — Cy Young awards don't matter much to Greg Maddux. He has got plenty of them.
A fifth Cy Young? Too far off to even worry about.
Twenty victories? There are too many factors that could scuttle such a season, no matter how well he pitches.
"I enjoy watching the game. I just think about what I have to do to make good pitches. That's it," said Maddux, whose unprecedented
pitcher — no, make that one of the most intelligent guys — I've ever coached," Mazzzone said. "He's always looking to upgrade his game."
Career: Pitched with Chicago Cubs from 1987-92; signed with Braves as free agent before '93 season.
Hobbies: Video games
Leugh © Grohem
PO BOX 67148
lopeka, KS 66614
Maddux is a work that's constantly in progress.
**Family:** Wife, Kathy; two children
**Note:** Only pitcher to win four straight Cy Young awards (1992-95); has won seven straight Gold Glove awards; five-time all-star; nine straight seasons with more than 200 innings pitched; two 20-victory seasons.
That's the heart of Maddux's brilliance. He keeps looking forward, yet he has the computer-like ability to retain all those tidbits that will help him keep the upper hand.
The previous two seasons, Maddux seemed almost from another world, putting together back-to-back performances that statistically rate as the two greatest years for a pitcher in baseball history — 16-6 with a 1.56 ERA in 1994, 19-2 with a 1.63 ERA in '95.
Birthplace: San Angelo, Texas
Residence: Las Vegas
"Maddux was overwhelming," said Gwynn, one of the greatest hitters ever to play the game.
"You change every year," the pitcher said. "I see a lot of guys who are totally different pitchers today than they were two years ago when they had their career year, their best year. They're not even close to pitching that way now, yet they try to."
"I don't even try to do that," he said. "What good does it do me? I'm worrying about the Pirates (his next opponent). They've got a lot of new faces. You try to remember what you did against them, what they did against you. Man, I'm not worried about, what was it, 1993 or '94? I don't think it's going to help me."
Age: 31
streak of four straight Cy Youngs was broken last season by teammate John Smoltz. "I don't try to collect numbers or win games. I just try to make good pitches."
"Greg's the most intelligent
It's a tribute to Maddux's greatness that 1996 — 15-11 with a 2.72 ERA and, more telling, no Cy Young — is considered a subpar year — only in the sense that it was human.
Gwynn's 12-game hitting streak.
Based on the first month of the season, Maddux might want to go ahead and clear off a shelf for another Cy Young.
During five starts in April, he went 3-1 with a 1.13 ERA. He took a scoreless streak of 29 innings into May. One of his starts took all of 1 hour, 47 minutes to complete — the fastest major-league game in five years.
"Greg is throwing a lot better," said Eddie Perez, his personal catcher. "He has more velocity and even better control on the corners. I mean, he was great before, but awesome is the word now."
How do those seasons compare with this season?
A look at Greg Maddux
Indeed, Maddux the Magnificent is back, though it's not like he really ever left.
"For about the 913th time, there is nothing different about Maddux," pitching coach Leo Mazzone said impatiently. "He's consistent as consistent is. He's simply the greatest pitcher in baseball."
In a rain-shortened, 2-0 victory against the Padres in Atlanta on April 27, Maddux ended Tony
Horse looks lame but he's a winner
Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Captain Bodgit might look lame, but he's not fooling anybody.
The colt has a bulging tendon in his left foreleg which has been the topic of much conversation, but which certainly has not bothered him. "It's just something that's part of him," trainer Gary Capuano said yesterday. "I know him, and I've been training him up to this point, and I'm not going to change anything because of the last."
What's to change?
Captain Bodgit, who has raced from the start with the funny leg, won five of six starts as a 2-year-old and emerged as a major contender for the Kentucky Derby. He upset previously unbeaten Pulpit in the Florida Derby on March 15 and won the Wood Memorial on April 12.
Spend a Buck broke on top and stayed there, running the first half mile in 45 4-5 seconds and winning in 2:00 1-5 seconds.
Who will take the lead and what kind of pace he will set are big questions in this Derby. Will the pace be fast enough to give stretch runners Captain Bodgit, Crypto Star, Hello and Jack Flash a chance? Will they be eliminated by a pace slow enough to let others have something left for the stretch run?
Perhaps Pulpit, who won his first two starts wire-to-wire, will take the lead nobody seems to want.
Trainer Frank Brothers said that Pulpit would probably not go to the front.
"But if they go slow enough and that's where he is, that's fine," he said. "If they do the first half in 48 and he's there, that's fine. But that's not going to happen."
Barry Irwin, who manages Captain Bodgit's career, hopes it doesn't happen.
"If they go in 48, I'll puke," he said.
Captain Bodgit, however, could be able to handle a slow pace better than some of the other stretch runners. He overcame that kind of pace in the Florida Derby.
Other contenders, who prefer to run in or near the pace, are Free House, Silver Charm, Concerto and Phantom On Tour, who worked three-eighths of a mile under jockey Jerry Bailey in 35-3-5 seconds yesterday.
Completing the field are Celtic Warrior, Crimson Classic, Shammy Davis and Deeds Not Words.
Captain Bodgit opened his 3-year-old campaign with a third-place finish in the Holy Bull. It was after this race that Irwin and Jeff Siegel bought the colt for $500,000 and put together the 32-member syndicate that owns him.
While Pulpit, the Claiborne Farm homebred, did not race last year because of a stress fracture, Captain Bodgit won five of his six 2-year-old starts, including the Laurel Futurity.
The purchase was made after veterinarian Alex Harthill examined Captain Bodgit, "funny" leg and all, and pronounced him fit. Capuano says that it's not a bowed tendon.
"It looks bad, but it's sort of a cosmetic type thing," the trainer said. "He deals with it."
Saints iron out image with Ditka addition
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS — Greg Suit knows about tough sales.
As the New Orleans Saints' marketing director, Suit is in charge of selling season tickets for a team that hasn't had a winning record in four years, never won a playoff game and finished 3-13 last season.
And when you don't win, you don't sell many tickets. That's where new coach "Iron" Mike Ditkade comes in.
Since he was hired in January, more people are buying tickets and more businesses are using the team's name and players in ads. The Hall of Fame tight end and Super Bowl-winning coach has given the Saints instant credibility.
"We've had a tough couple of years," Suit said. "Based on early returns, I think Mike is going to stop the bleeding."
In mid-May the Saints will begin a three-week radio and TV ad campaign featuring their new slogan: "This year, we're made of Iron." A second media blitz is planned for mid-July when the Saints open training camp.
"He's really the lynchpin for getting people back in the Superdome," Suit said of Ditka. "We want to get back to those days when we filled the Dome and everybody felt good about this team. What better way to convince people we're on that track than selling Mike Ditka. He's a proven winner and a national celebrity."
As the Saints fell from 12-4 in 1992 to 8-8 in '03, 7-9 the next two seasons, and finally watched the bottom fall out last year, interest in the team plummeted.
Jim Mora, the coach who had taken the Saints to the playoffs four times, quit halfway into his 10th season as coach. Fans who wore paper bags over their heads during the 1-15 season in 1980, barely bothered this time. Apathy had replaced pain.
Home attendance slipped to 302,000, down from more than
540,000 in the early '90s. Attendance in the 72,000-seat Superdome averaged 37,750 a game.
Ditka is trying to put fans back in
the seats and, of course, win some ball games. He hopes the new ad campaign helps.
"We're going to do a lot better, and that will mean selling tickets is easy," Ditka said. "This is not brain
Mike Ditka
surgery. It's simple — get the right people, put them in the right place.
"It's not going to be business as usual. The players aren't going to be the same as usual," he said. "If they don't put out 100 percent on the field, if they don't bust their butts, they're not going to be here. It's as simple as that. That's what they're selling, really."
Dr. Edward Strong, associate professor of marketing at the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, said the Saints don't have much choice in their attempt to sell tickets because of bad records and a lack of superstars.
"So what they are doing is following the old idea of selling the sizzle," he said.
An NBC commentator in the four years after leaving the Chicago Bears, Ditka is outspoken and decisive. He also has a reputation as a winner and a tough guy.
Surveys of Saints fans found that most felt that Ditka could make a difference. Asked to describe the coach, fans used words like "aggressive," "strong" and "tough."
Season-ticket sales have already increased. The Saints took orders for more than 3,000 new season tickets within 10 days of Dikta's hiring. They sold only 6,000 new season tickets during the entire off-season last year.
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