Greg Maddux throws strikes during rare public speaking gig
It was Sunday afternoon at Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, where the stage was bathed in desert sunset colors of purple, pink and orange. Long, wispy curtains partially concealed a backdrop of the Las Vegas skyline. Three overstuffed chairs upholstered in an earth tone sat on an Persian rug, along with a coffee table.
You half-expected Carole King to come gliding out during “The Living Room Tour,” except there was no piano.
At 2 p.m., three men who had combined for 355 major league pitching victories strolled onto the stage and nodded to the audience.
On the left was recently retired Norm Clarke, who never won a big league game, but wrote hundreds of short stories about baseball before becoming this newspaper’s gossip columnist. Norm once beat a very loud drum for major league baseball to come to Denver, which it did in 1993, when Norm was a newspaperman up there.
The guy sitting in the middle was Greg Maddux, also somewhat recently retired, who accumulated the aforementioned 355 pitching victories and in 2014 was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The guy sitting audience right was Jack Sheehan, semi-retired, who also never won a big league game. He’s a local author who has written 25 books. He also is Greg Maddux’s golf buddy, practically a full-time job, and helped craft Maddux’s Hall of Fame induction speech, a highlight of which was a “science lesson” involving methane gas and a cigarette lighter taught to Greg Maddux by older brother Mike, the Washington Nationals’ pitching coach.
(More on that later.)
This was the latest installment of “Conversations With Norm.” With Greg Maddux and Jack Sheehan, it said on the ticket.
I suppose they could have called it “An Afternoon With Greg Maddux,” a la “An Evening With Ringo Starr,” or “An Evening With Michael Bolton.” Had they called it that, Maddux probably wouldn’t have appeared, because when Maddux was winning 355 major league games, he was mostly known for three things: painting the black with his pitches, fielding his position, avoiding the spotlight.
Beforehand, near the green room, Maddux, and to a lesser extent, Sheehan, because Jack is an excellent public speaker who often is sought for emcee and similar duties, admitted they’d rather have been playing golf than have the spotlight shined on them, or at least those sunset colors shined on them.
But Maddux did great.
It was the most engaging I’ve seen him. People sitting nearby, most of whom professed to know him better, or had gotten his autograph once, or must have seen his “Chicks Dig the Long Ball” Nike ad with Tom Glavine at least a hundred times, concurred.
When Norm Clarke began with “You were born in San Angelo, Texas …”, in the manner that James Lipton might start interviewing Antonio Banderas on “Inside the Actors Studio,” I thought, uh-oh, we might be here awhile.
But because Maddux told great stories, or was cajoled into telling them by Jack Sheehan, it went faster than the lightning round on the old “Match Game” game show. Not once did Norm Clarke ask Greg Maddux about what sound or noise did he love or hate.
But Maddux, after being poked in the ribs again by Sheehan, mentioned a particular sound and noise that was heard on the ninth fairway one day at the famous Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando, Florida, during spring training.
It was Maddux, John Smoltz and Arnold Palmer, and I’ll let Maddux take it from there:
”… Probably the coolest part was we played the first eight holes, and Smoltzie is 1-over, and Arnold Palmer is even — he’s parred every hole, and Smoltzie is hitting it 60 yards past him, but Arnie keeps hitting his 3-wood and getting up and down.
“So we’re sitting there on the ninth hole and Smoltzie, um, kinda farts during Arnie’s backswing.
“(Palmer) chunks it, really hits it fat …
“… And Smoltzie goes ‘You think he heard that?’ ”
The audience at Cabaret Jazz broke up, and I noticed a couple of older guys were even crying in the manner of Cubs fans after the World Series. But these were a different kind of tears.
Greg Maddux told a bunch of other stories, most of which were funny, insightful or about Harry Caray falling off a bar stool, some of which I probably will get to in one way or another before next Opening Day, all of which I scrawled little reminders of on a cocktail napkin.
The only one I circled was “Maddux, Smoltzie and Arnold Palmer.”
Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.
