Greg Maddux, who along with Roger Clemens and Lefty Grove is one of the three best pitchers to ever live, will go for his 300th career win this Sunday at Wrigley Field.

Usually, when a player is on the verge of such an achievement he becomes the object of sudden national veneration. This has not happened with Maddux. Saturday’s trade deadline is the big story in the game right now. Appreciation of his career is at a low enough ebb that he wasn’t even invited to the All-Star Game, as has become traditional for future Hall of Famers nearing career milestones.

The relative silence is fitting and suitable. Maddux’s art does not translate well into the narrow terms of praise found at ceremonies like that given for Clemens at the All-Star Game. He is not iconic, he represents nothing beyond himself, and he is the most difficult of great players to admire, not just because of the intricacy of his game but because he represents more completely (because more idiosyncratically) than anyone else the truly terrifying idea that we could never do what athletes do.

Maddux is commonly thought of as the lone Everyman among the few greatest players in baseball history. He hardly looks like a professional athlete, with his paunch, thin legs and the bags beneath his eyes; he hasn’t thrown a fastball much faster than 85 mph in years. A resident of Las Vegas, he’s a notorious card shark and thought of as something of a mechanic on the pitcher’s mound. He relies on intelligence, study, memory, and a poker player’s knowledge of psychology to trick batters over and over again.

The significant difference between Maddux and his peers – Clemens, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez – is that he doesn’t appear to have physical gifts beyond those most healthy men his size could cultivate. (“Appear” is the key word here; most people comically underestimate just how hard an 85-mph fastball is thrown. They also fail to appreciate that Maddux’s abilities to locate the ball and control its speed are far, far rarer than mere arm strength.) None of us could ever be Clemens, Johnson, and Martinez, throwing 98-mph fastballs to locations no bigger than a dime. We could, it seems, be Maddux, if our minds were a bit crisper and if we had a bit more discipline and will. That, even more than his reverse breaking balls and the infinitely subtle variations of speed with which he can pitch, is his greatest illusion. Like a great card player, he is often referred to as a magician, and semi-seriously suspected of having been born with special powers.The word “magician” – it comes up again and again in articles about Maddux – is telling.

There is a reason why the most commonly told stories about Maddux don’t revolve around feats of physical prowess, but rather around his supposed precognition. As legend has it, he’ll call his infielders onto the mound and tell them in what order balls will be hit to them, and when he’s in the dugout he will move before a pitch is thrown only for that pitch to come crashing into the wall just behind where he had been sitting.

These stories attach themselves to Maddux because they point to what is unique about him. The truth is that if you were born with your mind and Roger Clemens’s body and talent, you could do what Roger Clemens has done. There is in a sense nothing extraordinary about him at all. He was born a baseball machine and he does what he does for much the same reason that a bull does what it does. This is less so of Martinez and Johnson, but it is true that most of what they have achieved has been less a matter of intellect than of the arms with which they were born.

Maddux is something far stranger. If you or I were born with his body and talent, we would still not be Greg Maddux. As remarkable as his control and his ability to dip, bend and break the ball are, there is nothing separating his physical gifts from those of thousands of pro ballplayers who have come and gone since he pitched his first game. Maddux is unique because he has not merely survived in, but utterly dominated a game in which someone unable to sign their own name can become a superstar. He is a living refutation of the cult of athleticism and he makes nearly all other ballplayers look completely insignificant by comparison.

This is why it’s no surprise to me that Maddux is less honored than he should be. He is not, like Clemens, an archetypal figure, and he cannot be compared to anyone else. If we could compare our minds to his as easily as we can compare our bodies to Clemens’s, I suspect he would be despised instead of genially neglected. It’s no matter; for those who care to appreciate it there will be Maddux’s 300th win. It will be the most extraordinary pitching achievement of our time.