The Cubs Way

by Tom Verducci

  The entire shoebox that was the old clubhouse essentially became a batting cage, with most of the other space built behind it under street level of what had been a parking lot. Epstein was involved heavily in the project, making sure, as Hoyer half-joked, that the feng shui was just right for a baseball team. To avoid pockets of perceived value-enhanced spaces—which happens with corner lockers in rectangular rooms—Epstein ordered the main dressing area to be a rounded room to promote democracy. The diameter of the room was no accident, either: 60 feet, six inches, same as the distance between the mound and home plate. In the middle of the room, beneath a giant Cubs insignia and mood lighting are leather couches, enough giant television monitors to shame a sports bar, and a granite-topped counter.

  Beyond the dressing area are a maze of rooms: a weight-training room; a video room; a therapy room that includes a cryotherapy machine, a float pod, and portable hyperbaric chambers; a lounge with recliners, Pop-a-shot, Ping-Pong, foosball, Golden Tee golf, air hockey, and guitars with amps; and a kitchen and dining area staffed by a chef and a nutritionist.

  Between the batting cage and the dressing area is a designated “party room,” where the Cubs immediately celebrate wins as soon as they come off the field. The lights dim, electronic dance music starts to play, strobe lights and smoke machines fire up, and videos with the star of the game begin to play. The players dance, sing, chant, and splash bottles of water on each other.

  For years Maddon believed players wasted too much time in the clubhouse, sitting for hours watching movies and killing time under fluorescent lighting. It’s one reason that in Tampa Bay he instituted “American Legion Week,” in which he ordered his players to show up just an hour or so before game time, just as they did when they played American Legion baseball. He took the same concept to Chicago. But even Maddon had to admit that the environment in the new facilities was so comfortable that he started to rethink his position about clubhouse time.

  “One of the things Tom Ricketts focused on,” Hoyer said, “was that if we were supposed to be a first-class organization then we would have to make sure we took care of everything for the player. If they feel that we take care of every little detail for them, then all they need to do is go play. The more we can do for them has value as far as showing we care about them and their families as people.

  “That hadn’t happened here before. When it was run by a company like the Tribune Company it was an entertainment product. The Tribune never was able to invest the money in doing stuff like that. In some ways we went overboard, making sure that they knew, ‘That isn’t true about the Cubs anymore. You are going to be treated great and have the best of everything.’ ”

  Coincidentally or not, in the first year with the new clubhouse facilities, the Cubs won 57 home games, the most in franchise history at Wrigley Field.

  Wrigley Field actually is two ballparks, and for as long as it has been around players will know as soon as they arrive which one is in store on that day: they check which way the flags atop the roof and scoreboard are blowing. Most often, the wind blows in from Lake Michigan, turning the park into a haven for pitchers. Then there are some days, such as May 17, 1979, when the flags are starched stiff toward the lake and Wrigley becomes a bandbox. The Cubs scored 22 runs that day—and lost, 23–22, to Philadelphia. For Game 3, the signs were bad for starting pitchers Kyle Hendricks of Chicago and Josh Tomlin of Cleveland: the flags were blowing straight out, buffeted by 15-mile-per-hour winds that gusted up to 25 miles per hour. Maddon wasn’t worried about how Hendricks would handle the elements and the excitement of the first World Series game at Wrigley Field since 1945.

  “I haven’t even thought about that, because if he pitches badly, it’s not because he was nervous,” Maddon said. “He would have pitched badly just because he pitched badly. I think he is ready for it. He is bright. And when you really open up a conversation and stay in there a long time he’s really good. He’s exactly as you saw him. He’s just a nice fellow. He’s a nice human being who happens to be a good pitcher.”

  —

  With the wind howling straight out to centerfield, the Cubs and Indians played the most opposite kind of game the conditions encouraged: Cleveland won, 1–0. Maddon gave Hendricks a quick hook—two on and one out in the fifth inning of a scoreless game—but it mattered little because of how Cleveland pitchers Tomlin, Andrew Miller, Bryan Shaw, and Cody Allen stifled the Chicago bats. The Cubs managed just five hits.

  “Unbelievable,” Maddon said. “I’m looking at the flags, and we can’t hit a ball on the fat part of the bat. It was un-friggin-believable. It was the most unlikely of everything. And Kyle was fine and then all of a sudden he wasn’t fine. I don’t know what happened. When he gets up to 85 [pitches] in the fifth inning—ugh, I don’t like that at all.”

  The Indians manufactured the only run in the seventh inning. Catcher Roberto Perez singled off Carl Edwards Jr. Pinch-runner Michael Martinez moved to second on a sacrifice bunt and to third on a wild pitch. With the count 3-and-1 on Rajai Davis, the Cubs called for a disguised pitchout: a fastball thrown intentionally out of the strike zone to allow the strong-armed Contreras to try to pick off Martinez at third. Maddon didn’t care about walking Davis, as the intentional ball would cause. He didn’t want Edwards to give in to the hitter while behind on the count and risk a hit that put a big inning in play.

  Edwards threw the pitch slightly low and outside, causing Contreras to start from a somewhat compromised position. His throw was strong, but a little farther inside the baseline than he preferred. Third baseman Kris Bryant reached for the ball, caught it, reached for Martinez, and tagged him a fraction too late for the out. Everything about the play was slightly off by the narrowest of margins—enough to lose the chance for the out.

  “K.B.’s not a good tagger,” Maddon said. “Watch the replay. He goes and gets the ball and then he tags. Let it travel and just drop it.

  “I thought we could do it. I’m always watching the runner at third. And Willson’s so good at it. Again, just let the ball travel just a click.”

  The next batter was pinch-hitter Coco Crisp, a .231 hitter for Oakland and Cleveland in 2016. Crisp is a notorious fastball hitter, especially early in counts. On first-pitch, four-seam fastballs during the season, he hit .290. On all other first pitches, he hit .206. Contreras, wanting to make use of his strong arm, signaled to first baseman Anthony Rizzo that he was looking to pick off Davis from first base after the first pitch to Crisp. To expedite such plays, catchers call fastballs, not off-speed pitches, on possible pickoffs. The preferred spot for such a pitch with a left-handed hitter at the plate is on the inside corner. So Contreras asked Edwards to throw a first-pitch fastball to Crisp—the pitch that turned Crisp into a .677 slugger in the regular season. Crisp lined his favorite pitch into rightfield for a single, sending Martinez home with the only run of the game.

  “We were going to pick when Coco got the hit,” Maddon said. “Wanted curveball there, but wanted to be aware of picking, so I think they went with fastball there as opposed to curveball because of the pick.”

  The Cubs had waited 71 years to get back to the World Series for this: they became the first team in Fall Classic history to strike out a combined 23 times in two shutouts—and it took them only three games to do it. It was the second time the Cubs lost a 1–0 World Series game. The first time occurred 98 years earlier against Boston. The winning pitcher that day was Babe Ruth.

  The first assignment Theo Epstein gave Joe Maddon after hiring him as manager of the Cubs was to go see Javier Baez in Puerto Rico at the end of January 2015. Baez was their top prospect, a 22-year-old infielder with the kind of wicked bat speed that reminded scouts of former major league slugger Gary Sheffield.

  One morning during the previous spring training in Mesa, Arizona, Epstein said to me, “Come with me. You have to see this,” and we headed to a back field, where Baez was taking batting practice. It was like watching the golfer John Daly blast tee shots on the
driving range. Baez sent one ball after another high and far beyond the outfield fence, but it was the brutal violence in his swing that was more arresting than the ball flight. Swing after swing, Baez created tremendous torque with a looping motion with his hands just to get himself ready to swing—the barrel of his bat wrapped behind his head and pointed at the pitcher, as if making a personal threat he would make good on. When the bat did come around to meet the baseball, Baez swung as if his life depended on it. One manager in the Pacific Coast League, where Baez played with Triple-A Iowa most of that summer, said the highlight of his season was watching Baez take batting practice. Opponents stopped what they were doing to watch when he took BP.

  Baez made his major league debut late in the 2014 season, and did so with unprecedented impact. He hit a home run in his first major league game. He hit two home runs in his third game, becoming the first player in Cubs history to post a multihomer game so quickly. But Baez’s grip-it-and-rip-it approach came with a downside: he piled up strikeouts and rarely walked. He also was prone to emotional outbursts on the field that gave away his youth.

  Epstein asked Maddon to watch Baez play for Santurce in the winter league playoffs. He had two reasons for dispatching his new manager to visit his top prospect. One, he wanted Maddon to establish a personal connection with Baez. And two, knowing that Baez figured to be a part of the Cubs’ 2015 plans, he wanted Maddon to evaluate Baez’s skills before spring training. Epstein and Jed Hoyer already had extensively reviewed players on the roster with Maddon, who was growing excited about the young talent available to him.

  “It’s really fascinating, and I kind of relate,” Maddon said shortly before flying to Puerto Rico. “I started out as a scout through those different states. I definitely have the scouting gene in me. [Former Angels scouting director] Larry Himes was the guy who nurtured that within me. Larry was outstanding, so I feel like I’m a good scout. Looking at these players right here, I’m not being a genius: these are really interesting players.

  “The big thing is, can we make them accountable? And how professional are they going to be about the day? I don’t know that yet. What is their makeup like? I’m hearing good things, but you can have the greatest skill set in the world, but if you are not an accountable Major League Baseball player you are probably not going to get better. It’s probably going to somehow hurt the fabric of the team and eventually that’s not going to work.

  “So, yes, on paper, physically, this is a really, really talented and interesting group—no question. But beyond that I’ve got to get in the dugout and clubhouse and find out what makes these guys tick.”

  The visit to Baez was the first step in that process. Was Baez an accountable player, or was he someone who might hurt the fabric of the team?

  “The big thing,” Maddon said about the trip, “was to get to know him because he was going to be a part of the future soon, to develop a relationship with him. The swing and miss, the long swing…but I had heard about the defense and how wonderful that was…but primarily it was just to get to know him and observe.

  “In Puerto Rico, he was playing for Santurce at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, a stadium named after a pitcher who played for the Cubs in the mid-’40s. So all these crazy connections started jumping out at me. His defense and his instincts on the bases stood out.”

  Baez went 0-for-9 with six strikeouts in the first two winter league championship games. Maddon could see he was trying too hard to try to impress him.

  “Hit a couple of singles,” Maddon told Baez, “and above all, I want to see you smile.”

  Baez had three hits in his next eight at-bats before Maddon returned home. Maddon’s first impression was that Baez needed a lot of work on his swing mechanics and his plate discipline. But Maddon took that impression and simply stashed it away in a file cabinet in the back of his brain. The emphasis on that kind of work would have to wait. His first concern with Baez was establishing a connection with him, as it is with any new player.

  Maddon’s entire managerial philosophy begins with those interpersonal relationships. His golden rule of managing can be summed this way: before you can manage and lead, first you must establish trust, and before you can establish trust, first you need to establish a personal relationship with your players.

  This emphasis on connecting with people is what so attracted Epstein to Maddon. It was at the heart of what Epstein emphasized in those first three years of the rebuild. Epstein wanted an organization with a holistic approach to development. Epstein looked for an edge over the rest of baseball in the character of his players. Finding a manager who not only believed in that edge but also could nurture it to its greatest potential was the missing piece.

  “A lot of challenges we face here are analogous, but not directly, to the same ones he faced in Tampa Bay,” Epstein said just before he sent Maddon to Puerto Rico. “He used creativity and originality and personality to overcome some obstacles they faced: payroll, stadium, fan apathy. Here we have the curse and day games and an intense media market and a young team. A manager can help overcome that, but he has to be creative to do that.

  “I do think Joe is a driver within an organization. He helps define the culture and sets the tone. His personality is inescapable. I think he’s an asset who touches all aspects of the organization. He helps create a humanistic organization. His personality and his intellect and his heart are almost too big not to make a difference in whatever organization he’s in. He creates possibility. He’s one of a certain subset today that creates opportunities for an organization just by his mere presence.”

  Given their like-minded approach to holistic player development, the marriage between Epstein and Maddon created a blissful honeymoon as the Cubs prepared for the 2015 season. Epstein’s wife, Marie, could see it on her husband’s face. Only one week after Epstein hired Maddon, she told him, “Look at you. I can’t remember the last time you were like this.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been smiling. You’re always in a good mood.”

  Epstein pleaded guilty as charged.

  “He’s so engaging you find yourself sitting up a little more, leaning forward in your chair a little more, your mind is going a little faster and you want to make him laugh and smile,” Epstein said. “You want to rise to his level of energy, intellect, and accomplishment. I think he has that effect on players. They want to match his energy and offer him ideas. You see that even in his young players, guys like [Evan] Longoria and [Chris] Archer. There’s a lot of creativity you see in them. He allows individualism that promotes personal growth. It’s about the environment he creates.”

  This new age approach seemed novel for someone who grew up in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town he considered “a subdivision of Europe” because of the influence of so many immigrants with old-school values, not to mention someone who grew up in a baseball age of taciturn and autocratic managers, such as his beloved and brilliant Gene Mauch. But the strong male figures in Maddon’s life were men of great depth and empathy, beginning with his father. As a kid in Hazleton, Maddon once broke a window playing baseball. His uncle fumed. Joe felt terrible. His father came by to see what was going on, took stock of what happened, and said, “Nice arm, Joey.” Maddon loved his father so completely he believed he could do no wrong. Pipes would burst in the middle of a cold night in Hazleton, and his father would respond not with complaint but with patience and positivity. Joey saw it. He believed his father never had a bad day in his life.

  There was Norm Gigon, his Lafayette baseball coach, a worldly man with his degree in history and government from Colby College and his master’s degree in history from Rhode Island. There was Bauldie Moschetti, the self-made millionaire who was smart enough to treat him like a son on the Boulder Collegians, rather than pay him. There was Loyd Christopher, the scout who cared enough about him to tell him the truth. They were givers, not takers. Maddon learned from them. He learned that the value of connecting with people exceeded whatever could be gain
ed from ordering them around.

  Under these men, and buoyed by his liberal arts curriculum at Lafayette, where he discovered James Michener and became a voracious reader of books, Maddon brought his own philosophy to baseball. He was open to new ideas. What really grated on him was the traditional inertia in baseball, created by the thinking of “because that’s the way we’ve always done it.” He liked to say that he read a lot of books, but “I never read the proverbial one,” a reference to playing and managing baseball “by the book,” the phrase that refers to using traditional, risk-averse strategies that date back to John McGraw.

  The books he did read, by writers such as James Michener, Leon Uris, and Pat Conroy, not only entertained him, but informed him. Within every book Maddon looked for lessons he could apply to baseball. He scoured them for methods and ways of thinking that changed a group in a positive way.

  Like billboards on a highway, Maddon’s outlook on life and baseball were never hard to miss. On his very first day as a big league manager, at the 2006 spring training camp of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Maddon asked the clubhouse manager, Chris Westmoreland, to order and hang signs in several languages that said, ATTITUDE IS A DECISION.

  Over the years his favorite canons of baseball wisdom typically found their way onto T-shirts for the players. He started the practice in the late 1980s with the Angels with a shirt that said, EVERY DAY COUNTS. Among the many such classics since then from the Maddon oeuvre, with translations, were GET LOUD (strive only for hard, or “loud,” contact, rather than fixating on results); 9=8 (all nine players playing hard for nine innings each day equals one of eight teams in the playoffs—the slogan of his 2008 pennant winners); ALL ABOARD MADDON’S BUS. THERE’S A DIFFERENT BUS DRIVER EVERY NIGHT (everybody on the team contributes); and BE PRESENT on the front and FUH-GEDDA-BOUDIT on the back. (One day Maddon saw a player struggling to shake adversity and yelled, “Forget it!” A lightbulb went off in his head: that’s exactly what “being in the moment” is about.)