BASEBALL ALL-STAR GAME REPORT : Braves’ Maddux Disdains Awards, Vows to Keep His Eyes on the Prize

Greg Maddux, the Atlanta Braves’ right-hander who will start for the National League in tonight’s All-Star game, tends to take the low-key approach to nearly everything.

His major league-leading 1.80 earned-run average and 11-5 record?

“The season’s not over,” Maddux said. “I’ve had a great first half, but I don’t want to say I’ve had a great year when I have 15 to 17 starts left. I’ll just try to go about it like I did in the first half.”

His chances to win a third consecutive Cy Young award, never done before?

“If you pitch for the Cy Young, you pitch for the wrong reasons,” he said. “I have to remember the team comes first. My main goal still is to pitch in the World Series, and that’s the reason I left Chicago and went to Atlanta.”

Houston Astro first baseman Jeff Bagwell said of Maddux: “I don’t see the American League, but I have to think he’s the best pitcher in baseball. The impression I get is that he stands out there knowing he can get you out. He throws three pitches for strikes any time he wants. I just look for the ball against him. I don’t try to guess or go deep, but I haven’t had much luck no matter what I try.”

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Pittsburgh represented the last stop for Jim Fregosi as a player before he was hired as the Angels’ manager in 1978.

Said the National League manager: “This is where I finished, but my career was over long before I came to Pittsburgh.”

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Don Fehr, executive director of the players association, made the point again that more than 200 players have attended the collective bargaining negotiations, but not one owner.

“I think that suggests the level of interest among the players in reaching a solution, and the level of interest among the owners,” he said.

Richard Ravitch, the owners’ chief negotiator, has instructed the owners to stay away.

“Why?” Fehr asked. “What’s he trying to hide?”

Ravitch said he’s not hiding anything, only trying to have the message come through one voice for consistency and continuity. He said the owners are kept fully apprised and disagreed with Fehr’s contention that by having the owners present “it eliminates the difficulty of having information filtered out.”

Added Fehr: “Also, if you’re talking about a true partnership, as they claim, you need to have the partners present to make the appropriate arrangements.”

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Why is a salary cap needed to adjust the alleged revenue disparities when you have a small-market team, the Montreal Expos, leading its division, and the big-market New York Mets in an ongoing state of collapse?

“Spending doesn’t guarantee winning, but if you don’t spend, it’s almost impossible to win,” Ravitch said. “I’m standing here today and predicting that the Expos of 1995 will become what the Pittsburgh Pirates are in 1994. They won’t be able to keep their team together, and that’s the tragedy of the current system.”

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American League Manager Cito Gaston of the Toronto Blue Jays said he hopes to use his entire pitching staff, a reference to his failure to use Mike Mussina of the Baltimore Orioles in last year’s game at Camden Yards, which left Gaston a marked man in Baltimore.

“That was last year and this is this year,” Gaston said. “I try not to carry a grudge, and I hope he doesn’t.”

Mussina, back as a member of the AL staff, said he doesn’t.

“I want you to know that I didn’t buy even one of those T-shirts (denigrating Gaston),” Mussina said. “It was a big deal at the time, but you don’t play major league baseball with the goal of pitching an All-Star game in your home park. There are more important goals.”