What happens when you write a popular book about yourself but also critical of the game that fed you? Joe Maddon is finding out, while he was aware his book, “The Book of Joe: Try Not to Suck at Baseball & Life” could prevent him from managing again.
“I’d like to manage again but there’s no reason to interview deceptively or put out a false method of what you think and how you think,” Maddon says on this week’s show.
This is “Joe being Joe” and it’s led him to great success in the big leagues albeit it took him until age 51 to get a managerial job. Tampa hired him in 2006. Three seasons later he had them in the World Series and they won 90 or more games 5 times in his 9 seasons there. Then, a loophole in his contract allowed him to sign with the Cubs and in 2016, the unthinkable…The Cubs won their first World Series title in 108 years!
“You lay down on your pillow and wake up and say wow, we did this. Knowing the parade would ensue I really had no idea it was kind of that magnitude to it,” Maddon relates about the epic moment of winning it all.
But, in 2019 Maddon and then team president Theo Epstien parted ways. “It was shocking. It didn’t expect it to happen.” But it did and it happened again in Anaheim where I’m in 2022 he was fired after Angels lost 12 in a row.
By then, Maddon was collaborating with Tom Verducci on his second book.
Hear the full conversation on this week’s “Tell me a story I don’t know” by clicking play below,
While managing isn’t out of question, joining a front office also would intrigue Maddon who’s done just about everything else in the game.
“I know I have a lot to offer. It would have to be the right marriage so when that opportunity arises again which I think it will, there’s a lot I can bring to the table.”
The question now is will a team gamble on Maddon who turned 69 earlier this month? After being fired by the LA Angels, time will tell.
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