"Wow! He's still got it!" - Look Magazine

It's two days early, but happy 40th birthday to Greg Maddux, who chose his third year with the Cubs to finally stop his unfortunate recent tendency to spend the first several weeks of any new season sucking wind. For the record, Maddux's last three starts to a year:

2003 (with Braves): Lost first three starts, with the Braves losing the games 10-2, 17-1, and 16-2; in the third game, against Philadelphia, Maddux allowed 10 runs (seven earned) on 12 hits. His ERA at the end of that stretch? 11.05. It took him until September to finally get under 4.00 for the season.

2004 (with Cubs): Lost first two starts, the first a hard-luck 3-1 decision against the Reds, but the second a 13-2 home loss to Pittsburgh in which Maddux went just 4.2. He proceeded to allow seven earned runs in six innings in an 11-10 loss to the Reds in his third start, though he avoided a decision in that one. His ERA after three starts? 8.62. He got under 4.00 as early as June 16, though.

2005 (with Cubs): Oddly enough, this might have been his best start of the three - he lost his first start (5-4 to Arizona, giving up all 5 ER in just 5 IP), then took three straight NDs before getting a win against Houston. Naturally, this was the year he went 13-15 with a 4.24 ERA - his worst ERA, fewest wins, and only losing season since 1987 (when he was 21).

But what do we know now? You can't count out Greg Maddux.

Sure, the very act of me writing this will probably cause his arm to fall off, but as I said after his win in the first game against St. Louis, I'll take 6.1 and one earned run from Maddux every fifth day from now until October. Maddux allowed four hits on Friday and struck out one; today he allowed just three hits and struck out seven, including the literal side in the top of the third. (As my dad often gripes, announcers will mention "striking out the side" any time a pitcher records all three outs in an inning on strikeouts. But what if the pitcher also gave up four runs that inning? The literal "striking out the side" is three up, three down, three Ks. Maddux did that.)

Right now his ERA is 1.46. He's 2-0. Maddux hasn't been 2-0 since 2002; his ERA hasn't been within two runs of 1.46 at any point since he finished 2002 with a 2.62 mark.

Oh, and he now has 320 career wins, within shouting distance of Roger Clemens (341) for the most of his generation. I don't know if he'll get there (Clemens might also yet decide to come back and tack on a few for good measure), but if he stays healthy he should have 330 all but in the bag as long as the team doesn't fall apart behind him. 330 would move him into the top ten all time and pass Don Sutton, Nolan Ryan, and Steve Carlton, among others. Only five guys who began their careers after 1900 would have more wins. I really hope he finishes his career in Chicago; they blew one chance to keep him in town and now he's going into the Hall of Fame as a Brave, but to have his career come full circle as he chases Clemens in a Cub uniform would be a small measure of justice. Don't let this guy finish his career as a Diamondback or something.

I realize I probably sound disproportionately optimistic so early in the season (and one day after proclaiming "Cubs suck" in the post title), but I'd like to try enjoying my Cubs fandom for at least one year. I already told Drew to plan on at least one trip to Wrigley a month; it's criminal that a Cubs fan can have lived within earshot of the park for going on two years now and never have been to a single game there in that time - in fact, I haven't been to a game since a 2-1 win over the Brewers on May 7, 2003, a two-hour, 20-minute game won by Shawn Estes and lost by... get ready... Glendon Rusch. Not a single player who took the field for the Cubs that day - Tom Goodwin, Alex Gonzalez, Sammy Sosa, Eric Karros, Mark Grudzielanek, Moises Alou, Mark Bellhorn, Ramon Martinez, Damian Miller, Troy O'Leary, Hee Seop Choi, Shawn Estes, Antonio Alfonseca, and Joe Borowski - is still wearing the uniform. Less than three years later. Wow. (On the other hand, look at that lineup! I think it can be argued that the only positions at which the Cubs are currently worse than they were to start 2003 are the outfield corners, and what they lose in power they gain in youth.)

But I'm rambling again. The point is - Wrigley trips, and not infrequently. Sure, it's not the cheapest thing in the world to do, but how many times do you live this close to your favorite team's home stadium? You'd think, having grown up so far from the Cubs, I would feel more draw to see them now. And it's not that I don't, it's just that I'm not exactly rolling in cash. But there comes a point at which you say "the hell with it." And at least I'm drawing a paycheck now, unlike the majority of last season. So we're doing this.

(For the record, I did come back to Chicago a number of times as a kid, but I never saw a Cubs game - the only ballgame I saw in Chicago between 1985 and 2000 was a freaking Sox game. I believe, based on the Retrosheet box scores, that it was the April 29, 1993 game against the Brewers, the infamous "As if!" game in which Dan Pasqua came up in the bottom of the seventh with the Sox clinging to a 5-4 lead and two out with a man on. Someone nearby mentioned a home run Pasqua had once hit off the Ragu sign, well behind us; recalling his .205 average of the previous year, I snorted, "As if," prompting Pasqua to immediately hit a home run a few rows in front of us in the right field seats, and the Sox fans in front of me to turn around and go "As if! As if!" in a simultaneous burst of delirium and disdain. Not good times.)