If you love baseball, no, if you love sports, this two minute clip from MLB Networks upcoming documentary “One of a Kind” gives some of the best insight to how the highest of IQ’s approach the game. Barry Bonds, perhaps the greatest hitter of all-time, and four-time NL Cy Young Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux, are shown the same at-bat where they faced each other in 1998.
Bonds and Maddux have an extensive history against one another. Bonds faced Maddux 154 times, the most appearances any batter has against Maddux. They were very familiar with one another by ’98, although both players went on to play about another decade in the league after this meeting, which is an absolutely insane testament to their longevity (spare me the ‘steroids’ take please, I know).
Folks, drop whatever you’re doing
— Not Gaetti (@notgaetti) August 14, 2024
This is simply incredible stuff right here
Two of baseball’s most cerebral geniuses, Barry Bonds and Greg Maddux, breaking down the absolute chess game that was their approach to competing against one another pic.twitter.com/ihpu0GQVgR
I could listen to Barry Bonds talk about hitting for hours. Unfortunately, one of the things that gets lost in the story of Barry Bonds is just how ridiculously smart he was. It’s the one thing that truly separated him from the rest, and what made him supremely gifted with a bat in his hand.
There was a moment that made me laugh: after Maddux throws a first pitch cutter up-and-in that jams Bonds for strike one, Bonds says, “He’s gonna try to throw that changeup, a little floater away. Because he thinks I’m gonna speed up because he jammed me.”
It immediately cuts to Maddux, “The cutter beat him, so I thought he would speed up. So I threw him a changeup and he spit on it. That was a pretty good changeup right there, and it was a pretty easy take for him.”
Hilarious, how are you supposed to deal with that? Maddux is one of the smartest pitchers in the history of baseball. No pitch was wasted with him, he’s executing what he wants, the only problem is Bonds knows exactly what he’s doing.
I’d venture to say 8/10 batters today swing at that second pitch changeup that Bonds spits on. This type of IQ, this type of deep understanding of the game, is what separates good players from truly great players. There’s a reason there are only seven players currently hitting over .300 in MLB.
It’s a chess match between Bonds and Maddux that ends with Bonds taking him deep to left, after Maddux tried to throw another fastball inside. You can’t make the same pitch to Bonds twice, and he knows what you’re going to throw when you’re ahead of the count and when you’re behind in the count. It’s an impossible challenge.
Physical ability only takes you so far, it’s the IQ and your approach to the game that elevates you to that next level. It’s something we’re seeing currently from guys like Bobby Witt Jr, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and Shohei Ohtani; they’re patient at the plate, they don’t chase, and they make you pay for your mistakes. None of them really compare to Bonds though, whose presence in the batter’s box I imagine is akin to how someone would feel watching Godzilla approach the shoreline.
10 out of 10 clip, I would watch multiple hours of this content between different pitchers and hitters.
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