Lucky finally got Number 300. My favorite pitcher in the Bigs made it into the Hall of Fame. Greg Maddux (or Lucky, as his family calls him) is an old geezer—as a major league pitcher—and his days in the Show (the majors) are numbered. Lucky is a precision pitcher and I think that he was called Lucky because his pitches looked hittable, but Lucky just put his pitches barely out of reach. Greg Maddux thinks before he throws, but the ol' bod won't do at 38 what it did at 28. Lucky has come full circle back to the Chicago Cubs. I'm pulling for the Cubs to win it all (for the first time since 1908) so that Lucky can go out in style. I'm sorry that Harry Caray (the voice of the Cubs) didn't live to see it. If this is (fair & balanced) sycophancy, so be it.
[x NYTimes]
Fittingly, Team Effort Lifts Maddux to Mark
By VITTORIO TAFUR
The Cubs' Greg Maddux
became the 22nd pitcher
to win 300 games,
despite giving up four runs
on seven hits and three
walks on Saturday.
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 7 - All week, Greg Maddux said he was not going to get too worked up about his 300th victory.
His job, taking the mound every fifth day, was about team, not about him, he said. Which is a good thing, because Maddux's 300th victory Saturday had very little to do with him.
He struggled for five-plus innings, allowing four runs, seven hits and three walks, but he emerged victorious when the Chicago Cubs scored two runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings and defeated San Francisco, 8-4, at SBC Park.
"It was fitting," Cubs Manager Dusty Baker said. "It was a team victory. You don't win 300 games with your best stuff out there every time."
Maddux is the 22nd pitcher in major league history to win 300 games, and the first National Leaguer to do it since Steve Carlton 21 years ago.
A 38-year-old right-hander, Maddux improved to 11-7, and more important, he would say, the victory put Chicago three games ahead of San Francisco in the wild-card race.
San Diego, which played later Saturday, was a game and a half back.
Maddux wasn't on the bench at the end of the game (he never is) and didn't crack a big smile until after his postgame news conference, when teammates gave him a Champagne and light-beer shower.
"I didn't pitch all that good," said Maddux, who has averaged just under 16 victories a season during his 19-year career. "It was a total team effort."
The Cubs (61-49), who ruined Giants pitcher Brad Hennessey's major-league debut, have won five of six since trading for shortstop Nomar Garciaparra last week.
Maddux clearly did not have his best stuff from the start, but managed to survive a 29-pitch first inning
He gave up a triple to Ray Durham, a walk to J. T. Snow and a double to Edgardo Alfonzo, but was only behind by 1-0 after A. J. Pierzynski fouled out.
The Giants added two runs in the third when Alfonzo followed a Snow single and a Barry Bonds walk with a single to right.
That scored Snow, but Bonds was nailed at third trying to advance on the throw home. He would have scored, along with Alfonzo, on Pierzynski's double, which made the score 3-0.
Maddux left in the sixth ahead, 6-3 - to a standing ovation from the crowd of 42,578 - with two on and nobody out after Alfonzo and Pierzynski singled. Deivi Cruz singled off reliever Jon Leicester to drive in Alfonzo, but the Cubs' bullpen held the Giants scoreless the rest of the way.
Maddux, succeeding in his second attempt to get 300, admitted to being relieved that the quest for the milestone was over. Not that it was a long quest. Asked when winning 300 games became a goal, he answered, "When I got to 299."
He added, "I am just relieved that we can put it behind us, and do what we can now to get to the postseason."
Hennessey did not throw a pitch in 2002, missing a minor-league season because of two back operations. He had benign tumors below his neck, near his spine, and he needed two procedures to have them removed and his top two vertebrae fused.
A 24-year-old right-hander who was the team's top draft pick in 2001, he was called up by the pitching-poor Giants on Friday after walking seven batters in his latest start for Class AAA Fresno.
He was rolling along, allowing one hit and striking out Sammy Sosa in his first two at-bats, until the fourth inning, when the Cubs' formidable lineup woke up.
Aramis Ramirez doubled to right, Derrek Lee singled to right and Todd Walker drove them home with a double to right. That made the score 3-2, and Hennessey held on until the fifth, when Ramirez drove in Garciaparra with a two-out single to tie the score, and Lee knocked Hennessey out and Ramirez in with a double off the right-field wall.
The Cubs made the score 6-3 on Corey Patterson's two-run homer off Tyler Walker in the sixth, and Moises Alou put the game away with a two-run homer off Brett Tomko in the ninth.
Maddux, who got his 200th career victory against San Francisco in 1998, likely will not look back and let it all sink in until he is done playing. He knows he is in select company, with his 300-170 record, but prefers to focus on his next start, which will come on Friday against the Dodgers.
"I like to look ahead," Maddux said. "I never really look back. Pitching every fifth day, with four days off in between, is a good gig. It really is. To be able to pitch as long as I have is really special."
INSIDE PITCH
The last pitcher to reach 300 victories was Roger Clemens, who did it last year with the Yankees. Greg Maddux is a big fan. "I think basically we're the same kind of pitcher," he said. "We just throw at different speeds. We're doing the same thing on the mound, just subtract 10 miles per hour." Maddux, who was 38 years 115 days old Saturday, is the fourth-youngest 300-game winner. The three youngest are Christy Mathewson (31 years 328 days), Walter Johnson (32 years 190 days) and Grover Alexander (37 years 207 days). Steve Carlton did it when he was 38 years 275 days old. Barry Bonds flew out twice to the warning track against Maddux. He has more at-bats (121), home runs (8) and walks (23) against Maddux than any other hitter.
Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Hummm, Babe!
W's Greatest Admirer
Garry Trudeau has special venom for Yale men: George H. W. Bush (41) was portrayed as a floating, white feather; Bill Clinton (42 and Yale Law School grad) was portrayed as floating waffle with a melting pat of butter; and George W. Bush (43) is portrayed as both a floating cowboy hat (All hat, no cattle?) and a floating Roman centurian helmet. Trudeau spares no one who is a Yale man. John Kerry had better dread his election. He will be portrayed as a floating spatula (flipper) in Doonesbury cartoons after January 2005. In today's strip, Trudeau engages in a bit of counterfactual history. If this is (fair & balanced) casuistry, so be it.
What Might Have Been If There Had Been No Coup In 2000 [click on strip to enlarge]
W's Frat-Boy Nicknaming
W loves to tag friend and foe alike with nicknames: "Kenny Boy" Lay, Maureen "The Cobra" Dowd, Diane "Frazier" Feinstein, Barbara "Ali" Boxer (the two Senators from California are defined by Senator Boxer's surname in the mind[?] of W), and Dick "Angie" (for angioplasty) Cheney. W called his first White House Press Secretary—Ari Fleischer—the "Bald Jew." This stuff, as Kate Clinton demonstrates, is sooooooooo funny. W—the born-again Christian—thought his microphone was off in the 2000 campaign when he leaned over to his running mate Dick Cheney and pointed out Adam Clymer from the New York Times, referring to him as a "major league asshole." Cheney replied "yes he is." Isn't W cute? The man who brought dignity and truth back to the White House ought to be nicknamed the "Village Idiot." Give 'em hell, Kate! If this is (fair & balanced) idiocy, so be it.
[x The Progressive]
Unplugged Kate Clinton
The Dubbing W.
My Bush-induced Tourette's syndrome continues. While he gave himself goosebumps reading his rocks-in-the-stream, feather-in-the-wind, angels-in-the-whirlwind Inaugural speech, I was like that little, braided-hair Von Trapp Family girl after Julie Andrews lays out the do-re-mi. I shrieked, "But tit doesn't mean anything!"
I was at a friend's house at the time, veins popping in my reddened neck, when her three-year-old daughter and budding anger-management counselor tugged at my sleeve and quietly said, "Please use your inside voice."
The violent fantasies have abated, though. I was in danger of becoming as rabid as any Clinton-hater after several pardons and some light vandalism. You stole the Ws off our computers. You stole the election. Nyah, nyah.
There I was, whining about feeling disenfranchised, powerless, bushwhacked, and bewildered to a friend who is African American, and she gave me a "how do you like it?" look that had the effect of a hysteria-stopping, cold-water slap in the face. I have ramped down a notch.
But unlike some, I still find W.'s charm offensive offensive.
The penchant for nicknaming and thus disarming the suckups we call the press has been widely and warmly reported. Marc Lacey, of The New York "Hey Gray Lady!" Times, lovingly reported that in a big-time display of Texas-style levity and folksiness at a meeting of lawmakers in Austin before the coronation, W. called "a rather bulky Democrat from California" (Representative George Miller) "Big George."
The guy is brilliant! Unlike so much else in this beyond-teflon saga, the name stuck. And from now on, you better be fixin' to call Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, "Freddy Boy" because that's what W. dubbed him.
No one seems to get that these nicknames prove our "President" is, indeed, a sophomoric, glad-handing frat boy.
Or that his behavior is akin to a pathetic plea for approval from the lowly office guy who replaces toner and feels compelled to add "meister" to surnames.
I mean no offense to sophomores or office workers. I do mean insult to frat boys.
J. C. Watts, Republican of Oklahoma, is reported to have welcomed the whimsical namecalling as a break from the lemon-sucking seriousness of governance.
OK, Okie Man, Token Man, suck on these:
Joe Biden--Plug Man
Spencer Abraham--Loser Man
Gale Norton--Watt's Up?
John Ashcroft--Integrity Man
Donald Rumsfeld--Missile Man
Jim Baker--Bull Connor without the Stetson
Alan Gimme Some Greens Man
Ari Fleischer--Arrogant Condescending Infuriating Snippy Spokes Man
Rod Paige--Voucher Man
George W.--The Edumacation President!
Extra for when and if W. ever goes to the Mideast--Ariel Butcher Boy Sharon.
Hey, this is fun! I'm charmed. Maybe the next four years won't be so bad.
Especially now that I've formed "The Kate Clinton Full Gospel Choir and Liberation Army." We've got religion, and now we want our federal funds. Bow your heads and join me in prayer:
"Our father who art in Kennebunkport, please watch over the health of Dick Cheney, our old, rugged boss.
"Our Lady of the Teleprompter, we know that when you move us to say 'faith-based' you mean 'you're on your own now, sucker.'
"Thou who hast worked supreme miracles in the past as recently as December, and who know that the grievous sound we hear is the wall between church and state come tumbling down, vouchsafe unto us enough vouchers to pay this month's gas bill until we, too, are delivered from this hell of bipartisanshit and are born again into that heavenly estate that will soon be untaxed."
Can I get an Amen?
Kate "Don't Call Will Durst for a Lifeline, Call Me" Clinton is a humorist. This column is supported by a grant from the Purple Moon Foundation.
Copyright © 2002 The Progressive
A Tale Of Two Women
 On The Left: The Cobra |
 On the Right: Condi |
This AM, I watched "Meet The Press" with Tim Russert. I was disappointed with Russert today. He started off with Condoleeza Rice, followed with Dennis Hastert, and concluded with a dual interview of William Safire and Maureen Dowd of the NY fishwrap of record. In all three segments, Russert was soft on the guests. Condi was spouting nonsense about this president and this president as if W was Superman. Her spin on W's behavior on 9/11 when he sat and sat and sat in that elementary school classroom was that W was projecting a demeanor of calm, resolute leadership. My take on both the video that Michael Moore used in Fahrenheit 9/11 and the still photos shot by White House photographers was W thinking: What the hell am I gonna do? The Dickster and Rummy are in DC. I'm in deep doo-doo and I don't have idea-one. He looked lost and scared and clueless. Anyway, Russert gave Condi pass after pass after pass. The worst? Condi dismissed the 9/11 Report and Richard Clarke for telling us that W received a briefing shortly before 9/11 that carried the headline: bin Laden Determined To Attack The United States and that W took no action because the information was historical, i.e., old news. Then, today, when Russert asked about the use of old reports by the Department of Homeland Security to seize headlines after the Democrat National Convention ended: "Terrorist Attack Imminent!" Condi babbled about al Qaeda's preparation for its 9/11 attack on the United States. In other words, old news was valuable now, but it was worthless just prior to 9/11. Condi reminded me of a fertilzer salesperson with a mouthful of samples (male bovine excrement). Russert ought to be ashamed of himself. Big Russ would tell him that, too. At least Russert allowed Mareen (The Cobra) Dowd to speak without interruption about her new book: Bushworld. The Cobra nails W at every turn. William Safire (also interviewed in this segment) is erudite, but he is a political hack. A speechwriter for the Trickster has sold his soul to the devil. Safire didn't mess with The Cobra, though; they office on the same corridor with Tom Friedman. Safire referred to that area of the fishwrap HQ as "Murderer's Row." What a stark contrast between Condi and The Cobra. Give me The Cobra every time. I would have loved to see The Cobra interview Condi on "Meet The Press." Like Muhammed Ali, I pity the fool. If this is a (fair & balanced) mixture of disdain and admiration, so be it.