Rivalries Part 1: Maddux v. Bonds

So I’m sitting here watching the Wimbledon final, Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal, and it’s mesmerizing stuff. Frank Deford calls tennis “bloodless boxing,” and I think that’s right. What makes Federer vs. Nadal so unique and fun is that they are such different personalities on the court – Federer is cool, imperturbable, moves around so easily, stealthily, cat burgler, a young Ali, Greg Maddux. Nadal is fiery, fierce, intimidating, imposes his will, a bar bouncer, Joe Frazier, Roger Clemens.

When they play, it’s like watching Superman-Lex Luthor. Tennis used to be a lot of fun with Borg, Connors, McEnroe, Lendl, Nastase, Navratilova, King, Evert, Austin – you know, good guys and bad guys, only it was just as much fun (more fun?) rooting for the bad guy as the good guy. That’s the kind of emotion that Federer-Nadal inspires – at least for me. I don’t know who is the good guy or bad guy in Federer v. Nadal, but I suspect if you like one of them, you despise the other, and that emotion is at the heart of every great rivalry.

There really isn’t another great rivalry anywhere in sports right now, is there? Tiger pretty much stands alone in golf. Women’s tennis looked so promising a few years ago, but no new Chrissie-Martina rivalry has developed. Boxing, surprisingly, wasn’t saved by the Evander Holyfield-Lou Savarese fight. There doesn’t seem to be a Russell-Chamberlain, Bird-Magic type of thing in the NBA … maybe LeBron-Durant will evolve into that. I’m told there are terrific rivalries in Ultimate Fighting if you enjoy watching men beat the living hell out of each other in cages. I don’t know – it just doesn’t seem quite violent enough for me. Maybe they can give the fighters brass knuckles. Switchblades. Death stars. Something.

Anyway, I don’t think baseball makes enough of its individual rivalries. The core of baseball, after all, is that one-on-one match-up, that brilliant moment when the game is on the line and you have a great pitcher on the mound and a great hitter at the plate. Admittedly this doesn’t happen as often as it used to because of all the specialty relievers – you rarely get even the great starters going into the late innings. And it’s true that the tension doesn’t seem quite as high when it’s Jimmy Gobble facing Jim Thome in the eighth rather than, say, Tom Seaver against Willie McCovey.

Still, the thrill is there when the great ones clash. So each day this All-Star Week, we will highlight one (or several, depending on our time situation) match-up of great current pitchers and hitters.

Matchup No. 1: Greg Maddux vs. Barry Bonds

How they’ve done: Bonds is hitting only .268 against Maddux in 127 at-bats. He is slugging .496, which is more than 100 points less than his career slugging percentage. On the other hand, Bonds has hit eight homers off of Maddux (tied for the most he’s hit off any one pitcher) and the 23 walks allowed is by far the most issued by Maddux to any player.

Thoughts: I’m about to go on the road with the Barry Bonds home run circus, so he’s on my mind a lot. You know, I’ve always liked the guy. One of the real challenges of being a modern-day sportswriter is that we find ourselves writing about people we don’t really know – and can’t really know. We don’t get to ride the trains with these guys; we don’t go to dinner with them on the road, we don’t catch movies with them on off-days. Every so often we might connect with an athlete in a slightly larger way (I used to have weekly chess matches with Chiefs star running back Priest Holmes) but generally speaking the media is now too overbearing, the money is too divisive, the symbiotic relationship between writer and athlete (you give me a story, and I’ll make you look good for the fans) has been pretty well wiped out. None of this is necessarily bad – there used to be way too make jock sniffers in the media – but it isn’t necessarily good either.

In any case, we form our opinions about athletes now on much less information. Is Barry Bonds a jerk? Based on my three or four personal dealings with him, the unequivocal answer is: No. He was kind to me, generous with his time, funny in his sardonic way and thoughtful with his answers. Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly grilling him – all of my interviews were done well before any steroid talk. Still, he was great, and if I had never read or heard a single thing about Barry Bonds, and someone asked me: “What kind of guy is he?” I would say without hesitation: A terrific guy.

(Then again, I interviewed O.J. Simpson five months before the White Bronco chase and I called a friend to tell him that Simpson was one of the “warmest people I’d ever met.” So maybe the problem is I’m not a particularly good judge of character).

Obviously my experiences with Bonds are a lot different from most (the same is true of my experiences with Curt Schilling. I have friends in the business who believe him to be the single worst guy in baseball. He’s been great to me. The guy sent me a complimentary email less than 12 hours after he won Game 1 of the World Series. I’m supposed to dislike THAT guy?). Still, in the end, we’re all human. I can’t help but base my feelings on my own experiences. I like Barry Bonds. There. I’ve said it.

And, of course, I love Greg Maddux. Funny thing, my experiences with him have been significantly less enjoyable than my experiences with Bonds … not that Maddux has ever been mean or rude or dismissive in our interviews. The best way to describe him, I guess, would be: Sort of disinterested. I blame myself. I believe that interviewers have good days and bad ones – just like pitchers. Some days, the questions just flow, and you really engage the subject. You find yourself taking the interview into wild new places … suddenly you are talking about whether the athlete liked the Addams Family or the Munsters, and while this won’t necessarily help tomorrow’s story (“KANSAS CITY – Emil Brown has always liked Lost In Space …”), it can open up that door that, as already mentioned, is much harder to open these days.

I’ve probably interviewed Maddux six or seven times, and there are a couple of pretty good interviews in there, but I never have had one of those breakthrough interview days with him. He’s my favorite pitcher, but I don’t think that was the reason. I just don’t think Maddux is particularly interested in analyzing himself or his pitching motives, and he’s smart enough to avoid doing those things, and because of that he’s a tougher nut to crack.

Bonds and Maddux both played their first games in the National League in 1986. Bonds was part of that amazing 1985 draft. He was the sixth pick in that draft, which would normally mean that the five teams who didn’t pick him were idiots. But in this case, you would have to say they were only slightly idiotic. The Brewers took B.J. Surhoff, who has had a very fine Major League career – he has more than 2,300 hits. The Giants then took Will Clark, who played at a Hall of Fame level for quite a few years. In fact from 1986-1991 – so we’re talking the first six years of their careers – Clark created more runs than Bonds. With the third pick, Texas took Bobby Witt – a mistake, but he did win 140-plus games in the big leagues. With the fourth pick, Cincinnati took Barry Larkin, who I think will go into the Hall of Fame.

With the fifth pick the White Sox took Kurt Brown – so, yeah, that might qualify as an error in judgment. Otherwise, though, everyone got good player.

Maddux, meanwhile, was a second-round pick out of high school in 1984 – he was taken one pick after Christ. Really. Mike Christ. The best pitcher taken before Maddux was probably Terry Mulholland. Bill Swift (taken with the second overall pick) did win 94 games in the big leagues.

Both struggled a little at first. Bonds was a strikeout machine his first full year, Maddux went 6-14 with a 5.61 ERA. They both improved rapidly – though Bonds became a star first. By 1988 he was a star, and by 1990, he was the best player in the league. Maddux was probably not a truly great pitcher until 1992.

And so Bonds ruled this rivalry in the early years – even after Maddux established himself. In 1993 – in that year, Maddux was on his way to his second straight Cy Young award – Bonds went 7 for 10 against Maddux with two homers. That gave Bonds a .342 lifetime average against Maddux, and he’d already his six homers off the man.

But if there’s one thing Greg Maddux knows how to do, it is adjust. I think in some ways Maddux’s remarkable ability to pitch and outthink people has become overrated through the years – the guy had some serious stuff too. His fastball may not have been clocked at 95 mph, but it would dive and hook and slice, and he could throw it anywhere he wanted. His control was so ridiculously good, he would Jedi Mind Trick umpires into calling strikes when the ball was clearly six inches outside.

Umpire: Ball.
Maddux: You don’t mean to call that a ball.
Umpire: I don’t mean to call that a ball.
Maddux: That ball was over the outside corner.
Umpire: That ball was over the outside corner.
Maddux: You can go about your business.
Umpire: Let’s play ball. Count is, oh, whatever. (Points to batter). You’re out.

But it is true that Maddux is a master at figuring things out. From 1994 on, Bonds never had any real success against Maddux. It seems, from the numbers anyway, that Maddux changed tactics. Up to that point, he tried to challenge Bonds. He gave up those hits and homers, but he also struck out Bonds quite often. After 1994, all that changed. He stopped trying for the strikeout. He started sinking the ball more – Bonds grounded out five of the eight times he faced Maddux in 1996, for instance.

Sure, Bonds still had his occasional moments. But after 1994, he has hit only .175 against Maddux. He has not hit a home run off of Maddux since early 1998.

All in all, you would have to say Skinny Barry was great against Young Maddux. But Big Barry has not done much of anything against Old Maddux. Somehow, I would not have guessed that.