With Roger Clemens approaching his 300th win, Dibs and I have been debating who is the better overall pitcher: Clemens or Greg Maddux.

	Roger Clemens possesses all the qualities needed to reach 300 wins.

Dibs contends that Maddux, because of his overall finesse and control of a ballgame, gets the nod over Clemens, who's equally dominating but is more of a "thrower" with his powerful fastball. To me, it doesn't matter what makes a pitcher great, as long as he gets the job done, and Clemens' fastball is just one of the many facets that has led to his success.

To settle this argument, we brought in a closer to finish the debate once and for all -- former major-league catcher Charlie O'Brien. Throughout his 15-year career on eight different teams, playing in nearly 800 games, O'Brien has caught for some of the best pitchers in the game: Clemens, Maddux, Doc Gooden, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, David Cone, Pat Hentgen and Chuck Finley (to name a few).

Overall, O'Brien has caught for 12 Cy Young winners -- including Clemens, Maddux and Hentgen in their Cy Young years, making him a connoisseur of pitchers.

O'Brien's answer: "Pick your poison. Do you want to get blown away or lulled to sleep? Because it's one or the other."

Hardly definitive, Chuck.

Determined to break through the ambiguity, I rephrased the question. "If you had to choose one, who would you rather face?"

"If I had to choose, I'd rather face Maddux," he responded.

Ahh ... now we're getting somewhere.

Against guys like Maddux, O'Brien explained, hitters at least feel they have an opportunity to get a hit. Whereas power pitchers like Clemens just blow you away.

"Then again," he continued, "it doesn't really matter who you choose."

O'Brien said that Maddux can be deceiving because he lets you get yourself out. But that's not saying he lacks toughness. "Maddux is more cerebral than most," O'Brien said, "but if you ever had a problem, he'd hit you faster than Clemens ever thought about hitting someone."

The debate continues...

More fun outtakes from the Charlie O'Brien interview:

On hitters facing Clemens:
"I've never seen a bunch of grown men take such hard hacks and barely hit the ball, where the pitcher has to run in [to field the ball]. I've seen times where [Clemens] had to run in on four or five balls because they take full hacks and they just don't hit the ball. In the 1995 playoffs, Reggie Sanders punched out, like, five times off Clemens. I remember [Sanders] walking in the box -- and he doesn't say anything anyway, he was just real quiet -- and he said, 'Gosh, I just want to foul one off.' And you just start laughing because he's already punched out four times and he never even touched the ball."

On catching for Maddux:
"Maddux loves to argue and talk. That's the neat thing about him. He had different ways of doing things. In the World Series with Jim Thome, he wanted to throw a changeup. So I went out there and I put down that I wanted him to throw a cutter inside. And he shook it off and went to a changeup. I said 'no' and went back to a cutter. He said 'no.' And I said 'OK' and called a timeout -- that's what I like to do, you don't force things on him.

I said: 'Dude, this guy is going to hit your changeup. He's on it. You threw one already and he's kind of looking for it. What we'll do is throw a cutter inside and we'll throw a changeup afterwards.'
He said: 'No, he can't hit my changeup.'
I said: 'Oh yeah he can.'
He said: 'Bet me.'
I said, 'OK' and went back there and called a changeup and [Thome] hit a bullet that almost hit Maddux right in the head.

I can't tell you exactly what he said. But he said, 'OK, you win' -- with a couple of cuss words in there -- and said, 'What'd you do, tell him it was coming? I said, 'I wish I did. He would have hit it out.'

On temperament:
"Maddux could laugh and joke during a game, that was the neat thing about him. He can separate the two, whereas Clemens is just in his own world and real similar to those [other] power guys -- you just don't talk to them. You just kind of let him go through the course of a game."

On his most memorable moment:
"The game that stands out more than any game I ever caught was Roger Clemens' first game back playing against Boston, in Boston. He punched out maybe 15 guys. In the eight inning, it was a 2-1 game and he went out there and punched out the side in 10 pitches (Mo Vaughn fouled off a pitch). When he walked off, he was looking up into the box at Dan Duquette, kind of shaking his head in a way of saying, 'Thanks for getting me out of here because I'm not washed up.' That sent chills up my spine just watching that."