Greg Maddux is about to become a Cub again.
Have nine sweeter words ever been uttered? OK, besides “Hi, it’s Bill Gates and guess what? We’re cousins!”
Barring an unforeseen snag, Maddux is expected to sign a two-year contract Wednesday and join some of his new teammates at spring training in Mesa, Ariz., the next day.
Greg Maddux is about to become a Cub again. Such a simple declarative sentence. So much weight and meaning to it.
On so many levels, this is right–from getting a player to return to the club he bitterly left to getting a player who will have a huge influence on fellow pitchers. Oh yeah, and the guy has been known to pitch a little too. It’s so right, so true, you wonder what took Maddux so long to agree to a deal.
Of course, he had to play the field, had to see who wanted him, had to see if any team felt like throwing more money into the pot. But somewhere in that card player’s heart of his, Maddux also had to see that Chicago was the only place for him to be. The only right place to be.
He’ll make his way to Mesa, where he’ll join Cubs pitchers and catchers on the field Thursday. He’ll be greeted by Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, and if they understand the grandeur of the occasion, they’ll hug him. If they watch and learn and listen, he’ll make them better pitchers.
But more to the point, he should win at least 15 games for the Cubs because that’s what he has done for 16 straight seasons. The starting rotation will be Prior, Wood, Maddux, Matt Clement and Carlos Zambrano. What do you call that? Murderer’s Throw?
And right to the point, the Cubs will be the clear favorites to win the National League pennant. Just like that.
Forget Houston with newcomers Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, both longtime American League pitchers. Some of us were of the opinion the Cubs already were the favorites to get to the World Series for the first time since 1945. But Maddux has the skills and the knowledge of NL hitters to lift them higher.
All along, through months of waiting for negotiations to heat up, you knew this was the right move, at least you did if you had an understanding of history and balance. After the 1992 season, Maddux left for big free-agent money in Atlanta and added three more Cy Young Awards to the one he had won with the Cubs.
It scarred the franchise in many ways, branding Tribune Co. as cheap and scaring away some free agents. But it went deeper than that. When Maddux left, a cold wind blew into town and never left. It’s reasonable to ask how one pitcher’s departure could cast so much doom on a franchise that hadn’t won a World Series since 1908. How was this doom any different than the preceding doom?
When Maddux went to Atlanta, Cubs fans huddled together for warmth and nonetheless felt very alone. That feeling has never entirely lifted. His departure felt like a bigger curse than the one involving a four-legged animal with a goatee.
So when the Cubs were within five outs of the World Series last season and that fan deflected the foul ball in Game 6, followed by Alex Gonzalez’s error, you said, “Uh-oh.”
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It was as if someone had sucked the oxygen right out of Wrigley Field. You knew what was coming. And when those eight Marlins runs then flooded the field, you saw all that bad history piling up, with the ghost of Maddux riding it like a surfer.
If you believe wrongs can be righted, then that’s what this is. Maddux’s return is a lot more than cosmetic surgery, a lot more than an aging veteran coming back to where he started. This has the potential to do some real healing.
This just feels right, and how many times over the past 95 years of Cubs history has that been the case?
General manager Jim Hendry gets a lot of credit for this, but so does a fiscal atmosphere that has kept contracts down. There wasn’t much of a market for a pitcher who had made $15 million last season, no matter what Maddux’s agent tried to say.
Hendry was smart for not panicking. Now there might be more money to spend in August.
So now Dusty Baker will manage. Derrek Lee will play first base. LaTroy Hawkins will come out of the bullpen. Wood and Prior will put fear into the hearts of otherwise tough men.
And Maddux will be where he always was meant to be. Home.