My brother came downtown last month, on a day I had to work, and he and a friend went off to the bleachers to watch the Cubs. Later that night, I asked how the day had gone–I believe the Cubs had lost, although I’ve forgotten–and after he recalled the highlights of the game my brother went on and said he had enjoyed nothing so much as watching Dave Martinez and Andre Dawson warm up between innings. He was going on to explain how it was interesting to watch their contrasting styles–even in just warming up–how Martinez throws with an outfielder’s motion, his arm straight over the top, like a catapult, while Dawson throws off his ear, like a catcher, and how Martinez puts an arc on his tosses, while Dawson’s warm-up throws have the same trajectory as his hits–line drives–and that perhaps the most amazing thing about them is the pinpoint accuracy they routinely display–lob, liner, lob, liner–almost willing the ball into each other’s glove at a distance of 200 feet–anyway, be was explaining all this when I interrupted, “Yes, yes,” because I and my season-ticket seatmate had noticed the same thing only the weekend before from our vantage point in the upper deck and had marveled at these two players for the same reasons. I mention this to show not that brothers’ minds sometimes work in the same odd fashion, but that baseball fans’ minds and thoughts are often alike–to remind us that this sort of moment is what most of us find endearing about the game, a moment difficult to convey to the unconverted. Here are two fellows, really just playing catch, that’s all, yet we find that in even this small act they establish their field personae with clarity and grace. We’ve talked with players recently, and soon we expect to find room for their comments in the space of this column, but for the time being I’d like to step back again and expand on an idea mentioned a month ago–about how the Cubs are undergoing a subtle but almost all-consuming change in character, from a team of exciting and demonstrative personalities to a team of younger and–on the surface, anyway–more professional players, no less exciting.
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The player who acts as the bridge from the 1984 division-winning Cubs to the new, promising Cubs is, of course, Ryne Sandberg. Unlike Gary Matthews, who made even the act of catching a routine fly ball an act of heroism, or the fiery Keith Moreland or the overtly emotional Leon Durham, Sandberg stood out among his teammates by his talent and his very blandness on the field. Now, four years after his MVP season and bearing down on 30, he is making the transition in our minds to elder statesman and representative of what the new Cubs are, the kind of baseball they play. Sandberg, with his smooth work in the field, his knowing exchange of whispered signals with the shortstop between pitches, and the efficient way he glides around the bases from home to third on a triple, is obviously a player who has given thought to the most minute aspects of the game. His batting stance is, literally, almost cut from a textbook (I remember the first baseball instruction manual I ever saw, in grade school, and aside from his hands being a little lower, a little closer to the body, Sandberg–with his bent knees, his back bent faintly forward, his body perpendicular to the pitcher–holds the same position as what that book called the “ideal” batting stance). Sandberg is a player who does things correctly, and in this I think he is the spirit of the new Cubs.
This new quality of correctness is not limited to the Cubs’ hitters; their pitchers demonstrate it as well, none better than Greg Maddux. Maddux, again, has a textbook pitching motion, and when one realizes there is much greater variance in pitching motions than in swings, Maddux says at least as much about the new character of the Cubs in his carriage on the field as does Sandberg or the other hitters. There is nothing complicated about Maddux’s motion: he raises his hands, turns perpendicular to the plate, kicks, and delivers. Especially noticeable are the controlled energy of his kick and the hop at the end of the motion–two functions of the speed of his fastball. Like Ron Guidry, Maddux is a small man who throws hard but with an easy, fundamental motion: the strong kick gives him momentum coming down the mound, momentum that must be then cushioned by the left leg, which bends to absorb the shock and then flexes, just as anything that is struck then strikes back (thus the hop). Last year, as a fastball pitcher being rushed to the majors, he struggled a good deal; this year, with a much-improved curve, he has had the pitches to keep the batters off stride and has become the Cubs’ ace. It’s beautiful to watch him blaze a fastball on one pitch and then roll the curve gently off his fingers, out of the same motion, on the next.
