King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Greg Maddux is a 300-game winner and a wonderful role model. Our Olympians are being asked to act more like him. Too bad.

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Aug 10, 2004 | I was scolded by reader Cheryl T. Strauss Monday for failing to mention Greg Maddux's 300th win over the weekend. "In an age when 'role model' and 'professional athlete' almost never appear in the same sentence, except as some kind of cynical joke, Maddux is the real deal," Strauss wrote.

I didn't mention Maddux's achievement because I don't get as excited as most people seem to about counting milestones such as a 300th victory. Maddux is only the 22nd gent to win 300 big-league ballgames, and that's certainly a spectacular thing, but he was also only the 22nd to win 299 games.

Everyone got so much more excited about Maddux's 300th win than they're going to get about his 301st, a greater achievement. Aside from it being a higher number -- you're with me on that, right? -- he'll be only the 20th man to win 301.

I got another note from Aaron Rutkoff of Brooklyn, who spent two hours hiking around Manhattan Saturday in a futile attempt to find a sports bar that was showing the Cubs-Giants game in which Maddux got his milestone win. I didn't ask him, but I don't think Rutkoff is going to invest that kind of shoe leather into finding a spot to watch No. 301.

And why is this? Because 300 divides by 100, which is 10 times 10, and we have 10 fingers. That's it. If we had eight fingers, numbers that divide by 64 would resonate with us. The milestones would be 256 -- Tom Glavine became the 38th to win that many earlier this year -- and 320, a club of 14 joined two months ago by Roger Clemens.

Well, that's just silly, isn't it? Three hundred twenty? Two hundred fifty-six? Of course it is. There's nothing wrong with being silly, of course. If 300 means something to you, good for you, but for me the targets that resonate are the ones that have been set by other players -- numbers like 755 or 73.

None of this is to say that Greg Maddux isn't a fabulous pitcher, a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, one of the all-time greats, and, yes ma'am, a role model. He's mentored younger pitchers in Atlanta and now in Chicago. He goes about his business on the mound, with no undue celebrating or posing. He's one of the great fielders ever at his position, a result of effort he could choose not to make without any damage to his reputation. He's modest and gracious in interviews and when he's not pitching he wears his glasses.

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