Joe Posnanski’s latest tome on Greg Maddux is incredible. Go read it.
That second pitch was a laughably bad call, and it did something — something that I think Maddux very clearly understood whenever he was the beneficiary of a bad call. Maddux had such amazing control that a bad call like that was good for TWO bad calls for him. Because he knew how to follow it up — Maddux wasn’t just pitching to a batter, he was also pitching to the umpire. After the awful call, he simply threw a patented fastball that was BETTER than the previous pitch. It may or may not have been a strike — it probably wasn’t, as I wrote — but it was so much better that Hirschbeck really had no choice but to ring up Fielder. Maddux really was a master of human nature.
ETA: This piece by Tom Verducci on Maddux is one of my favorite articles of all time.
His eyes light up, and he grins a silly grin. This is a man who is the master at undressing hitters while cloaking himself in camouflage. A magician never explains a trick. Let it remain, to our ceaseless amazement, part of the mystery of Maddux.
Even Poz is using “Edition”. Even though we don’t make up stuff about people’s jobs, our presence is still being felt far and wide on the internet.
That’s an excellent point.
Do I have to ask what ETA means?
I always thought it was “estimated time of arrival”.
me too, thats why I’m confuzzled.
edited to add
I don’t get it.
Upon editing a post that has been up for some time, a blogger will often add the ETA tag to denote changes have been made. This lets readers know there is new information.
/jmorris