Collected wisdom: Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux

By Jacob Unruh, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City (TNS)

Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Greg Maddux learned discipline early in his life.

His father was in the Air Force, which not only meant a structured lifestyle but also a childhood moving around from Texas to Spain.

It was that upbringing that molded a Hall of Famer.

Maddux developed into one of baseball's all-time best pitchers. He won 355 games and four Cy Young Awards and was elected into the Hall of Fame in 2014. He was also part of a trio of pitchers in the Hall of Fame alongside Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.

Now a special assistant to Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, Maddux travels within the organization at times to help younger players.

He spoke with The Oklahoman during his second stop with the Oklahoma City Dodgers about his childhood, his remarkable career with the Cubs, Braves, Padres and L.A. Dodgers, and more:

We moved around a lot really young. I remember changing schools a lot and maybe it was good. Maybe the fact that in baseball you move around a lot, you change teams, you change cities, you travel every 10 days, so that part was not really an adjustment for me.

There was some discipline. You had to hold yourself accountable. Probably the biggest thing — I didn't realize it then — but I think being in Spain there was no TV — well, there was in Spanish but we didn't speak Spanish — and there were no video games. So we entertained ourselves outside and we used sports to do that. We played all of the sports. All of the kids in the neighborhood were in the same boat.

We would show up at the neighborhood park and we'd get a game going. We'd play and actually have fun playing. We didn't realize we were competing because there was competition going on. We were just playing because that's what we did in our spare time.

I had weight issues where I didn't weigh enough to play football at the time. I probably enjoyed basketball more, but I was just better at baseball. Mr. (Ralph) Meder (a former scout) said I was pretty good in baseball and good enough to get drafted and I might want to take it a little more serious, and I did.

It's not about size. It's really about speed. You don't have to be big to have speed. If you have arm speed, bat speed, foot speed that's going to allow you to play past high school. That's something that all of these players you see around here, they all possess one of the three of those things, if not all three.

(With the Cubs in 1989) was the first taste of winning, even though we lost in the playoffs. As a player, it was the first time I experienced winning from a team standpoint at that level.

I remember when we won in '89 (Don Zimmer) was so excited he jumped up on the table in the clubhouse and it broke. We thought he might have hurt himself -- he slammed down and landed on his back. Now he's laying on his back and he's like "I don't (care). I'm so happy."

The expectations and the confidence we had (in Atlanta) were we were going to win the division. Even in spring training it was just a mindset that over 162 games our pitching was going to be good enough to win our division, it was going to be good enough to get to postseason. That's what I remember the most, especially the first month I was over there.

Coming from Chicago where there were years over there if we played .500 it was a great year. Over there .500 was out of the question. It was, "Let's win the division early so we can set the rotation for the postseason." It was a totally different mindset. I think Bobby and John Schuerholtz and the players all understood we're here to win, we're going to have fun when we're not on the field, but when we walk on the field it's business and we're going to try to beat you.

Bobby was awesome, he was very supportive, had your back. As long as you prepared correctly and did your job, you could do whatever you wanted. You had to hold yourself accountable for when it was time to have fun and when it was time to work, and Bobby gave us that freedom.

The one thing that he said — and it sounds weird coming from him — was you don't have to win to have fun. Well, it's like that's easy at the time with seven or eight in a row. But he's right. Obviously, you want to win, you want to do everything you can to win, the game's about winning but the bottom line is there's some unwritten rule if you don't win you can't have fun, and that's not the case. Bobby is the first manager that said it. Honesty with him is what we appreciated as players.

Glav got him kicked out of the most games. I only got him kicked out of one game where it was my fault. I feel pretty good about that. We used to keep score on who's getting him kicked out the most. Chipper (Jones) had a few, Dave Justice, but I think Glav led the league in getting his manager thrown out a couple years in a row.

Smoltzy was probably the game's best golf coordinator ever. There was always a tee time. Anytime you wanted to play golf on the road, Smoltzy had a tee time. He had the car, the tee time, the directions. We would go out and play some really nice courses in whatever city we were in, have lunch and then we'd go to the park and prepare for our next start.

I guess (using steroids) just came back to bite some guys when they didn't expect it, really. Everybody knew it was illegal and it was wrong. But again, then you hear, "Hey, if you're not cheating you're not trying." You hear that a lot in baseball, but you have to know the difference between right and wrong. When you deliberately do something wrong that you know is wrong I don't feel sorry for you. I understand why people did it. There's a lot of money involved, baseball's very short-term and nobody's looking five, 10 years down the road.

I'll say this: Probably Barry Bonds and Tony Gwynn as a young pitcher were the first hitters that taught me you beat lineups and not hitters. You have to find where your 24-27 outs are in the lineup, and it might not be with that guy. Maybe you've got to get these three guys out three times.

Tony Gwynn was probably the best hitter. Barry Bonds was probably the most dangerous hitter. Then there were always guys who scared you, scared the (daylights) out of you. Gary Sheffield, (Mike) Piazza, Jeff Bagwell. There were a lot of guys that didn't scare you but hit you good, maybe Mickey Morandini, Hal Morris. There were guys in a lineup that I'd rather pitch to this guy than that guy. If I have to pitch to this guy, I will but I'm never pitching to that guy. You picked your battles and hope your guys scored more runs than they did.

You hear things in baseball, you experience things in baseball and you try to pass them down to whatever fits that situation. You ask questions anticipating what's going to happen down the road and you try to prepare yourself for that.

See, these players have this opportunity to do something that they've loved doing since they were 5 years old. Anytime you can find a job that you enjoy doing, that's awesome. Good for you. You're ahead of the world. All of these guys have that opportunity, and if they do it well and they commit and try to get the most out of their ability and don't leave anything on the table they'll be fine. That was my thinking. I better take full advantage of this opportunity in front of me or I'm going to have to go back to Vegas and I'm going to end up dealing poker, Blackjack, a job I didn't want to do when I was 5 years old.