Earlier this year, I bumped into a longtime MLB umpire on a flight, and while we stood at the baggage carousel, waiting for our suitcases, he mentioned one of the Chicago Cubs starters he had seen recently. This umpire tends to look at players the way a doctor might view the 50 patients from a given day -- by the details of their symptoms, rather than by their names -- and he had no clue about the identity of the pitcher, nor anything about his background.

But the umpire vividly remembered the pitcher's stuff: a fastball, he said, that moved unlike any other he could recall, dropping straight down rather than with a west-to-east slant, plus a filthy off-speed pitch and a changeup the pitcher actually seemed to manipulate into or away from hitters. And in that particular game, the umpire recalled, Cubs manager Joe Maddon had relieved the pitcher in the middle innings. The decision greatly surprised the umpire, he said, not because of any strategic overview, but because of the stuff he continued to see from the pitcher.

The umpire wasn't second-guessing Maddon, but rather he was presenting a completely antiseptic evaluation of what he saw as the formidable weapons of the pitcher.

The umpire was talking about Kyle Hendricks, who has emerged as a candidate for the NL Cy Young Award, in spite of the perception of him as a benign, soft-tossing right-hander.