mADDUX "the Professor" makes history.....

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The Maddux brothers begin to train for spring training around Jan. 1. Mike Maddux, pitching coach for the Brewers, and Greg Maddux, future Hall of Famer, play catch. After a few minutes, Mike gets into a crouch and Greg, who hasn't thrown a baseball in two months, promptly throws strike after strike, nearly always hitting Mike's target.

"It's amazing," Mike said.

It's nearly as amazing that Greg Maddux, one of the best control pitchers in history, joined the 3,000-strikeout club Tuesday night. There are only 13 members in the club: Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, Bert Blyleven, Tom Seaver, Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton, Walter Johnson, Phil Niekro, Ferguson Jenkins and Bob Gibson.

Some of the 13 are among the best power pitchers ever. Not included are Jim Bunning, Warren Spahn, Bob Feller, Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale, Cy Young and Pedro Martinez.

Maddux arrived at 3,000 in a different way than most -- that is, with few high-strikeout games or seasons. In his brilliant career, he has had only 16 10-strikeout games, 199 fewer than Ryan, 191 fewer than Randy Johnson and as many as Alex Fernandez. Maddux has one 200-strikeout season -- everyone else in the 3,000 club has at least two. Ryan, the greatest strikeout pitcher ever, had 15 200-K seasons and six 300-strikeout years.

What separates Maddux from Ryan, and everyone else in the 3,000 club, is his low walk total. Maddux had 892 walks entering Tuesday night, the lowest total of anyone in the group, 105 fewer than the second fewest, Jenkins (997). Everyone else has at least 400 more walks than Maddux. Clemens has 605 more; and Ryan, with 2,795, has 1,903 more.

"He is everything I wanted to be, but wasn't," said Sutton, a Hall of Famer, a 324-game winner and a member of the 3,000-strikeout club. "He has more natural movement than anyone I've ever seen. And he is one of smartest pitchers who has ever lived."

Maddux is, of course, one of the best of all time. A case can be made for Maddux being among the top six or seven pitchers ever, along with Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Young, Spahn, Clemens and Christy Mathewson. Maddux has done what none of them did, what no one in major-league history has done: win 15 or more games for 17 straight seasons (the second-longest current streak among active pitchers is four seasons).

And yet Maddux has done it without much flash or flair, partly because of his low-key personality. Sutton tells the story about asking Maddux, then the best pitcher in the game, to have dinner with him several years ago at Ruth's Chris Steak House. Maddux politely declined, saying he was going back to his hotel room to eat leftover pizza and play a video game that, he said, "I just can't beat, but tonight is the night I'm going to win."

Maddux has won more than 300 games in his big-league career, and is now one of nine pitchers in history with 300 wins and 3,000 strikeouts. He grew up in Las Vegas, in the shadows of the casinos, and has made a living reading hitters the same way great poker players read the guy across the table. Once asked how smart Maddux is, Sutton said, "Very, but he is wiser than he is smart. I don't know if he could be the president of Harvard, but he could run Bally's."

Maddux has rarely pitched faster than the low 90s, and mostly has pitched somewhere in the 80s, but has located his fastball as well as anyone in history and has always had one of the game's best changeups. He is robotic in his preparation and execution; he once predicted that the first hitter of the game would fly out to deep left center, and, of course, that's exactly what he did.

That's what makes his entry into the 3,000-strikeout club so impressive: Maddux got there without power or heat, but with smarts and strikes.