Maddux tribute from a high-ranking fan

By Lisa Mascaro

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008 | 12:03 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Baseball great Greg Maddux may be reluctant to brag about himself, as the Sun’s Ron Kantowski notes today (“the last time Maddux blew his own horn was to prevent a four-car pileup in the Spaghetti Bowl”), but one high-ranking fan will do the honors.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in speech this afternoon on the Senate floor, praised the four-time Cy Young award-winning pitcher who announced his retirement Monday after 23 years in the big leagues.

“This is not a speech about some guy that played baseball in Las Vegas. This is a statement about one of the greatest baseball players of all time,” Reid said in a lengthy tribute.

Reid has followed Maddux’s career since the future Hall of Famer’s days at Valley High School in the 1980s.

The majority leader said he became a fan of whatever team Maddux played for – the Cubs, Braves, Dodgers.

“As difficult as it was playing for those losers, the Padres… I followed them because I knew Greg Maddux was on that team.”

Now, with Maddux’s retirement, the senator lamented: “I don’t know what team I’m going to root for.”

Reid noted the scandals of today’s athletes known for “taking steroids and fighting in bars and carrying guns into a bar and shooting themselves in the leg. ”

Maddux was none of that, Reid said, but “a wonderful man who is a role model for anyone that participates in athletics.”

Reid is often remembered for his own stint as a one-time amateur boxer, but his heart has always been in baseball.

He spoke today about growing up in Searchlight with childhood dreams of being a ballplayer. The one job he’d still like to have, he once told me, is managing a baseball team.

“Greg Maddux is the greatest athlete in the history of our state,” Reid said. “Americans lost for baseball a great human being. But for us in Nevada, his home, we still have Greg Maddux.”