When asked the secret of pitching, Warren Spahn once replied, "Hitting is timing -- the art of pitching is upsetting that timing." No one does that better than Greg Maddux, who has won nine games in a row and is well on his way to having yet another glorious year.

	Greg Maddux helps baseball resume tonight.

While Maddux is hardly the prototypical buffed athlete -- if you saw him walking down the street you'd think he was an accountant -- he remains the foremost practitioner of upsetting the hitter's timing. He learned his conditioning-via-throwing program from Leo Mazzone, who learned it from Johnny Sain, Mazzone's pitching guru. It's based only on the repetition of throwing; if Maddux is lifting weights, no one can tell.

This is not to say that Maddux is necessarily more gifted than Roger Clemens, who is having a brilliant year of his own and is well on his way to winning his record sixth Cy Young award. Nor does it mean that Clemens has to work harder than Maddux -- they are both extraordinary pitchers with uncommon talent. They are just throwbacks to different eras.

Maddux is a throwback to Spahn and Robin Roberts, great pitchers of the '40s, '50s and '60s who thought throwing (they were logging up to 320 innings a year, and doing it until they were 40) was the best way to develop. They didn't believe in lifting weights, because baseball was a game of flexibility and agility. Their lack of muscles didn't make them less durable -- they just developed their durability by throwing and stretching their arms out.

Clemens is a throwback to the likes of Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, Steve Carlton and Nolan Ryan. Those guys put the power in power pitchers, and they truly believed in conditioning. They would do everything they could in the offseason -- and between starts during the season -- to build up their body and legs and keep themselves in the best possible physical shape.

Conditioning has obviously worked for Clemens; he's solid as an ox and can intimidate anyone -- he'll bust one under your chin if he thinks you're cheating or leaning. And if the opposing hitter is wearing him out like Mike Piazza did, he will serve notice that there will be no more diving across the plate.

As different as they are, Maddux and Clemens do share a few common threads. They are both tremendous competitors, they are both exceptionally talented and they both work very hard. But the biggest commonality -- and a big part of both of their success -- is how both of them work everything off their fastball. Even though Maddux usually throws around 89, every one of his pitches works off his fastball. Everyone talks about Maddux's control and his changeup, but if you chart him, he, like Clemens, throws about 75 percent fastballs in any given game.

Clemens can throw a riding four-seamer that hits 97 or 98 mph, a mean two-seamer in the 92 range, and a slider and a split-finger pitch that the bottom falls out of. Clemens generally dominates, but when his arm is right, he's virtually unstoppable. Maddux can make his fastball do so many different things. He changes speeds on the fastball better than anyone in the business -- he can throw anywhere from 87-91 on a given pitch and locate it. Maddux is the finest control pitcher I've ever seen.

The interesting thing about Clemens' career is that last year he was in the process of making a transition. He thought he should get movement on his sinker, and get people out with his split-finger pitch. He wasn't pitching well in the first half of the season, then he had the groin problem and went down to Tampa for a rehab assignment, where Yankees pitching guru Billy Connors worked with him. Connors got in his face and told him he was turning into a junkballer, and reminded him that he was Roger Clemens, a power pitcher if ever there was one. He got Clemens back to throwing the fastball, and since July 2, 2000, his record is a remarkable 23-3.

Maddux is the supreme technician and Mr. Consistency. More than any other position player or pitcher, Maddux has the ability to repeat his delivery consistently better than anyone I've seen. His ability to throw all of his pitches out of the same arm slot, with the same tempo and rhythm, is the greatness of Maddux. He maintains the same delivery day in and day out, and it looks easy when he does it. But if it were that easy, everyone would do it.

Who would I rather have on my team? I'd like to have both of them -- I'd win boatloads of games. If it were the seventh game of the World Series, and Clemens was pitching on five full days' rest, while Maddux was on normal (four days') rest, my money would be on Clemens. He proved in the postseason last year that if he's on five full days he can't be beaten. He struck out 15 Mariners in the ALCS and mowed down the Mets in Game 2 of the World Series.

Without question, Maddux and Clemens are two of the all-time greats. They, along with Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Tom Glavine and Kevin Brown, are extraordinary because -- other than a brief period in the 1930s -- there has never been such a tremendous offensive explosion in baseball like these guys have had to pitch in. And Maddux and Clemens are the cream of a very talented group.

Dave Campbell, who played eight seasons in the major leagues, works as an analyst for Baseball Tonight and ESPN Radio.