Two hours before his first start as a 40-year-old pitcher in the major leagues, Greg Maddux was ready. He stood inside the dugout with his fingers wrapped around his batting practice bat and possessed a serious look. He angled his body sideways and, with a suddenly playful face, he took a practice golf swing and chipped a baseball into the drainage cup.

With a combination of intellect, tenacity and a dose of coy, Maddux is perhaps the most taken for granted future Hall of Fame pitcher of his generation. The timing of the first start of his fourth decade fell at Dodger Stadium on April 17, affording the opportunity to chart Maddux pitch-for-pitch in an effort to gain a better understanding of how and why he is so good at what he does.

For years, Maddux has operated with a Koufax-like screen of secrecy over his thought process. There is no eager conversation to discuss his effectiveness, leaving any conclusions to alternative methods. Perhaps the anatomy of a start can help explain why a pitcher who seldom throws a fastball better than 81 miles per hour can make spare change out of million dollar batters. Though it was against a Dodger lineup without Jeff Kent and Nomar Garciaparra, it was still a lesson in frugal efficiency. To call it cunning is to put it kindly. He preys on hitters who cannot guess along with him.

His advanced nature is so far ahead of everyone else that even his catcher seems to understand that Maddux is best left to himself. “He calls me out (to the mound) just to slow me down,” catcher Michael Barrett said, describing the issue of a polite order to let Maddux call his own game.

It took Maddux 34 pitches to get through three innings, which is where the game really began. He needed three pitches to get three outs to end the fifth and start the sixth, and in the process, picked Rafael Furcal off first base.

The second time through the lineup, Maddux needed 25 pitches to dispose of all nine hitters. Only three hitters made him labor in eight innings: Oscar Robles, the only hitter to twice work Maddux into a full count, saw 18 total pitches, Furcal (16 pitches) and Kenny Lofton (11). When Maddux missed outside to Robles in the third inning, the only time in eight innings he missed with three consecutive fastballs, he shouted “Damn!” so loudly that it could be heard in the Vin Scully Press Box.

Maddux’s mind is faster than bat speed. This helps explain why he makes hackers out of hitters. The middle of the Dodger lineup – Jose Cruz, J.D. Drew, Olmedo Saenz and Bill Mueller – saw a total of 27 pitches in 12 at-bats. Drew, the cleanup hitter, saw the fewest pitches of any Dodger – six. Mueller had an RBI double on a mistake, an elevated fastball, the only run Maddux allowed. It’s doubtful that Maddux ever threw the same pitch twice, bringing to mind the art of alternating pressure points of his finger tips on the fastball, a practice Johnny Sain taught for years. One of Sain’s protégés was Leo Mazzone, Maddux’s former pitching coach with the Braves.

Maddux builds the impression that his first pitch is the most hittable one, but the pitching chart doesn’t lie. In each of those 12 at-bats to the middle of the order, Maddux threw a first-pitch fastball, but here’s the rub: the first pitch to each hitter was never in the same location twice. He faced 26 batters and had only four full counts.

His patterns dispel two myths. One involves his changeup, which is commonly assumed to be his out pitch. But Maddux, in his 86 pitches, threw straight changeups in the neighborhood of 78 miles per hour only 16 times and never got outs with it, instead using it to set up his fastball, from which he got 14 of his 24 outs, never throwing hard enough to inspire fear.

The second myth is his command. While Maddux didn’t walk any Dodgers and threw 58 of his 86 pitches for strikes, his true weapon is movement. This allows him to confuse hitters with his otherwise modest velocity. “It’s not how many guys you do or don’t walk,” Maddux said. “It’s how you pitch to them.”

That is as close to getting inside of his mind as he’ll allow. His manager and teammates don’t even seem to go there. They play along, observe, and enjoy his creative process.

Final line: Eight innings, three hits, one run, zero walks, six strikeouts. In a game that consumed only 1 hour, 59 minutes, Maddux pitched Chicago to a 3-1 victory, his 321st. He finished April with the first 5-0 start of his career.

“You know what that game was?” Cubs manager Dusty Baker said. “That was a thing of beauty.”