Sometimes you’re so busy making history or are so surrounded by it that you don’t notice or have time to appreciate it.
So it is with teammates of Greg Maddux, who is on the brink of becoming baseball’s next and quite possibly last 300-game winner.
Do they appreciate what the guy over in the locker with a “31” on it is up to?
“I’ve had a chance to play with Maddux twice, once before he went to Atlanta and now here,” said Sammy Sosa, himself a walking piece of history as baseball’s No. 9 career home run hitter. “He’s the type of guy who’s always around the plate and throws a lot of strikes. And he doesn’t waste time. He works fast, and that’s good. That’s part of why he’s so successful.
“I liked facing him,” Sosa said, then laughed, adding, “when I had to.”
Being part of a Maddux performance, whether the 299th or potentially the 300th, “is something that you’ll always remember,” Todd Walker said. “I was on the field when Paul Molitor got his 3,000th hit, and I still remember that like it was yesterday.”
When Maddux returned to Chicago last off-season, he wanted no part of any exalted status because of his win total, his seniority, his golf handicap or anything else. He didn’t sign with the Cubs to be a mentor to their young pitchers. He signed to win, which is the best mentoring possible.
Still, this was Greg Maddux walking into the clubhouse.
“There was probably a little part of me that said, `Wow, this is a guy I grew up watching,'” Mark Prior said. “I try to stay clear of saying stuff like that to him. But when I walked in and saw him for the first time, it was more excitement than awe exactly. He was part of our team, and that was exciting.”
Some element of awe inevitably crosses the mind of a young player meeting a Maddux or a Sosa for the first time.
This is the Maddux of four consecutive Cy Young Awards.
This is the Sosa of 559 career homers and seasons of 63, 64 and 66 homers, the Sosa who with Mark McGwire in 1998 rescued baseball from the residue of bad feelings left by the strike of 1994.
Players of that stature have some immunity to the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately nature of sports. They know who they are and that what they’ve accomplished makes them part of baseball history.
“The things I’ve been doing, sure, that’s history,” Sosa said. “Like 1998, what Mark and I did, that’s history.”
Prior has never had to face Sosa, but he said: “I think you’re aware of who you’re playing with and playing against. When you’re on the field and during the game, obviously you don’t think about that. But when you’re watching on TV and they flash stats, you sometimes say, `Oh, wow, all right,’ that kind of thing.”
