MLB NETWORK'S GREG MADDUX DOCUMENTARY IS A MUST WATCH
Even for a franchise as historic as the Atlanta Braves, Greg Maddux was one of a kind.
Fitting its place as the longest continually operating franchise in Major League Baseball, the Braves have seen some of the greatest players to come through the sport suit up for them - Hank Aaron, the sport's true Home Run King, Warren Spahn, one of the greatest lefty pitchers to ever suit up, and third baseman Eddie Mathews, who played for all three iterations of the franchise, in Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.
But there were none quite like Greg Maddux.
Known as "The Professor" for his ability to out-think his competitors and "Mad Dog" for his competitive nature, Maddux won four Cy Young awards, a record 18 Gold Gloves, was an eight-time All Star, a World Series champion (1995), led the NL in wins three times and all of baseball in ERA four times, and yet Bill James still proclaimed him the most underrated player of all time in a 2009 book.
MLB Network wants to fix that.
A new documentary, titled "MLB Network Presents: One of a Kind' debuts this Sunday night (although attendees of Sunday afternoon's Atlanta Braves game during Alumni Weekend can catch a special screening postgame in The Battery Atlanta after the series finale), aims to change that.
It's just over an hour (without commercials) and packs a lot into that hour - opponents like Barry Bonds breaking down their battles on the field, teammates like fellow Hall of Famers Chipper Jones and John Smoltz discussing his personality and competitiveness, and his brother Mike, detailing both their childhoods and the thrill of squaring off against each other in the major leagues in 1996 (including Greg helping his teammates get hits off of Mike).
One of the popular clips going around in the weeks since the doc was announced has been a small part of the at-bat breakdowns with Barry Bonds, where each man watched film of some of their memorable at-bats and broke it down in real time.
That's just one of several at-bats that Maddux and Bonds review in the documentary.
Long before PitchCom became common across baseball, Maddux and catcher Eddie Perez worked out a system for Maddux to call his own pitches from the mound:
The greatness of this documentary isn't the time with Maddux. It's the time with the people around Maddux as he made his baseball journey, to Chicago and Atlanta and back to Chicago, before finishing in Los Angeles and San Diego and, finally, Cooperstown.
It's Chipper Jones, telling a story of how Maddux exactly predicted the finish of an at-bat, down to which fielder would catch the pop-up. It's Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, talking about being his teammates and then competing against him later. It's pitching coach Leo Mazzone and Eddie Perez discussing what it was like to be on the field with Maddux and how he was, from the neck up, "just smarter than everyone else", as Mazzone put it.
The full documentary, MLB Network Presents: One Of A Kind premieres Sunday night at 8PM ET.
Following the debut of One Of A Kind, MLB Network will air one of Maddux’s great performances featuring his 14-strikeout masterpiece against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 2nd, 2001, at 9:30 PM ET.
2024-08-24T11:15:57Z dg43tfdfdgfd