Prior to Friday night’s game between the Dodgers and Padres at Petco Park, the Padres organization honored recent Hall of Fame inductee Greg Maddux during a very emotional pre-game ceremony. The ceremony included an enjoyable three minute video tribute to the humble Hall of Famer and concluded with Padres manager Bud Black presenting Maddux with a beautiful plaque.

Hall of Famer Greg Maddux was honored by the Padres prior to Friday night’s game at Petco Park.
(Video capture courtesy of Padres.com)

To date the Dodgers have done exactly nothing for the 355 game winner – zero, zip, zilch, nada. And while Maddux was with the Padres a little longer than he was with the Dodgers, he actually posted a better winning percentage and ERA with the Dodgers than he did in San Diego – albeit not by much, but still…

“Mad Dog” or “The Professor” as he was affectionately known started 60 games with the Padres posting a 20-20 record and a 4.07 ERA. And while these aren’t staggering numbers by any stretch, they are rather impressive when you consider that Maddux threw a total on 5,008.1 innings in his magnificent 23-year MLB career and pitched until he was 42 years old.

A humble Greg Maddux waves to cheering fans (Padres and Dodgers) as he is honored at Petco Park on Friday night. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

With the Dodgers Maddux started 19 total games posting an 8-7 record with a 3.94 ERA – again, not great numbers but certainly good enough for a number four or number five starter who brought with him years of experience to share with the entire Dodgers pitching staff – experience that you simply cannot put a value on nor will you find anywhere else.

Surprisingly, the one thing that eluded the Hall of Famer was a no-hitter. One would think that a pitcher with the precision of a surgeon would have tossed several of them, but he did not. Interestingly enough, the closest that Maddux came to throwing a no-hitter was in his debut with the Dodgers on August 3, 2006 when he threw six no-hit innings against the Reds in Cincinnati – and then the rains came. When play resumed 46 minutes later, Dodgers manager Grady Little deemed that the delay was long enough to not risk sending the then 40-year-old Maddux back out there for his one and only shot at (further) immortality.

“He was saying during the rain delay that he had a no-hitter in Little League and that was going to be good enough for the rest of his life,” proclaimed Little, more as a justification than a concession by Maddux.

But as you might expect from the Las Vegas resident and avid golfer, Maddux took the high road and refused to pin blame on the former Dodgers manager.

“If it was five or six runs, I’d love to have gone out there and rolled the dice a little bit,” said Maddux after the eventual 3-0 win – his first as a Dodger and the 328th of his career. “But two runs in [Great American] ballpark? It’s easy to hit home runs here and they’ve got a lot of guys who can do it. I mean, what are the odds? If it was a bigger lead I would love to have tried it, but it’s not about me. This was a game we needed to win.”

Not honoring Maddux is probably more the result of Dodgers ownership at the time that Maddux was a Dodger than anything else, but as they have already done with several former Dodger legends, say… like… Sandy Koufax, now would be an excellent time for Stan Kasten, Mark Walter, Magic Johnson and the rest of Guggenheim Baseball Management group to at least honor Greg Maddux in front of fans at Dodger Stadium – even if doing so (unfortunately) comes after the Padres have already done so. Chances are ‘The Professor’ would be deeply touched and grateful.

In fact, why not have a Greg Maddux bobblehead giveaway next season (in a Dodger uniform, of course). I mean, how many Magic Johnson bobbleheads do Dodger fans really need anyway?