Make that “THE greatest,” Dip, er, Chip

07/11/2009 at 9:46 pm | In Mad Dog, voices of the braves | 8 Comments

Did you hear the promo for Maddux’s retirement ceremony Friday? Chip, bellowing as always, urged fans to be there for “one of the greatest pitchers of his generation.”

“One of”?!? With Roger Clemens no longer a part of the conversation, who’s Mad Dog’s competition? You could make a case for Randy Johnson, but not a strong one.

Maddux has 53 more career wins, a slightly better (3.16 to 3.29) regular season ERA and a much better October ERA. Johnson may have more strikeouts, but no one gave up fewer hard hit balls than THE greatest.

Even if it wasn’t so obvious, why do the Braves parse? They should be proud to have employed THE BEST PITCHER OF HIS GENERATION. And while I doubt Chip wrote the ad copy, it sounds like something he’d say.

There’s no shame in being a homer — unless you’re a shameless homer.

–CB

8 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. For me, the only guy who comes close is Pedro. I wish I could be there on the 17th.

    Comment by tbone82 — 07/11/2009 #

  2. Pedro has a better career ERA, but he’s 140 wins short. Then again, if you asked who was the greatest southpaw of his era, Sandy Koufax or Warren Spahn, most people would answer Koufax, even though the longtime Milwaukee Brave had 198 more career wins.

    I’ll take 338 more wins any day.

    Comment by atlmalcontent — 07/11/2009 #

  3. Stat’s aside just for the moment – Maddux’s style of painting the corners and keeping the batter unaware instead of just powering through on his pitches added to his “best” status. The best!

    Comment by JS — 07/11/2009 #

  4. Given the proliferation of offense, Maddux’s 1994 (16-6, 1.56 ERA, .89 WHIP) and 1995 (19-2, 1.65 ERA, .81 WHIP) seasons may be the two best in the modern era by any pleyer… and they happened back to back. Both seasons are loony tunes type numbers.

    Did anyone else see the AJC report that Glavine won’t be in attendance due to “family conflicts”

    Comment by call_me_chipper — 07/12/2009 #

  5. Yep, but I understand. He’s pissed at the organization, and he has cause. I’m sure Maddux is okay with it. Would’ve been cool to have him and Smoltz there that night.

    Comment by atlmalcontent — 07/12/2009 #

  6. The key word here is “pitcher.” Maddux is a PITCHER, like Spahn and the true greats. Randy Johnson is a glorified Sam McDowell.

    The less said about the execrable Clemens, the better.

    Comment by PepeFreeUs — 07/12/2009 #

  7. Chip is a shill for MLB. He has to stick to the over all MLB storyline and Maddux being honored by the Braves isn’t one of them. I often say that Maddux is “argueably” the best right hander of all time. I truly believe he is the greatest right hander and PITCHER of all time. He suceeded in an era of pure power with smarts and guile. There is no question to me that he is the best.

    Comment by Viva Rufino Linares — 07/12/2009 #

  8. Glavine is going to do a video for the event. Seems to me he’s hurting Maddux more than the Braves by not being there. But it sounds like he really does have family commitments.

    Comment by charlesad — 07/13/2009 #


Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.