Every now and then I abuse a press credential and show up at something I don’t actually “cover.”
The best example: sports. To wit: events surrounding a Super Bowl or the Outback Bowl, when my alma mater, Penn State, was playing. Back when Joe Paterno was still an iconic curmudgeon. Or maybe a FIFA facility tour to see if Tampa would be a World Cup venue in 1994 (it wasn’t) or an Ed Turanchik press briefing on Tampa Bay’s long-shot, 2012 Olympic bid. And there were introductory press conferences for Guy Boucher of the Lightning and Lovie Smith of the Buccaneers as well as a Bucs training camp during the Jon Gruden era.
They were all variations on a busman’s holiday for a scribe who actually had a sports beat in Philadelphia back in the day. Only this was more interesting and more fun than making a deadline after covering an Eagles or Temple University Owls game.
But one such local sports sortie still notably resonates–even more than the FIFA tour that featured a haughty Brit saying the U.S. getting the World Cup was like “Brazil getting the World Series.” It was the Rays coming-out press conference for Joe Maddon in the fall of 2005 at the Trop.
Larry Rothschild, Hal McRae and Tampa’s own Lou Piniella had preceded Maddon and all had failed and consequently been fired or quit in frustration. It was that kind of job. A payroll-challenged franchise that played in a poorly located, obsolete facility in a weird, hybrid market with no mass transit and few corporate headquarters.
The team, which perennially ranked near the bottom of MLB in attendance, had never had a winning season. It was a manager’s graveyard. Not even Piniella, a viable Hall of Fame prospect until he left Seattle to manage Tampa Bay, could change the against-the-odds, losing culture.
Now here was 29-year-old whiz kid Andrew Friedman about to introduce the next circus ringmaster.
At first you wondered if the new skipper were late. Surely, it wasn’t the white-haired guy in the thick, black glasses. Maybe he was Friedman’s father. Maybe he was there to fix the sound system that initially malfunctioned.
But that unique-to-baseball look was to become iconic around here.
The media, professional skeptics by vocation and DNA, were impressed. The new manager, this son of plumber Joe Maddonini and waitress Albina Klocek, was downright engaging. Witty. Self-deprecating. Enthusiastic. Optimistic. And sported a vocabulary sans clichés. Sort of hipster professor meets baseball lifer. No way could you envision this guy with a wad of chewing tobacco or the need for a spittoon.
After losing a Major League-most 197 games the next two seasons, the Rays under Maddon would be net winners over the next seven. That would include four playoff appearances, two division championships and one World Series appearance. Maddon was named American League Manager of the Year twice.
But it was much more than a 9-year winning percentage of .517. It was Maddon’s mastery of Sabremetrics, his use of radical defensive shifts, his obvious respect for those in his professional circle and his knack for keeping the game in perspective with out-of-the-box, sometimes goofy, gambits and road-trip themes that helped keep the players loose and built camaraderie. Players liked playing for him, the ultimate clubhouse accolade.
I remember visiting that clubhouse in 2013–and sitting with Maddon in his adjacent office. The Rays were in the playoff hunt, the game with Toronto was barely three hours away and we were talking about something that had nothing to do with baseball: the Hazelton Integration Project (HIP).
Hardscrabble Hazelton, Pa., is Maddon’s hometown, and it had undergone a demographic sea change in the last dozen years. Its 25,000 residents were mainly descendents of European immigrants. Now the population was 40 percent Hispanic–and the animus of stereotypes and distrust had replaced the metaphors of melting pots.
“Our town’s gonna die,” he remembered thinking when he had seen the cultural chasm first-hand a few years back. “We were pushing people apart–and away.”
He proceeded to create HIP to foster dialogue between the Hispanic and Anglo communities and to facilitate a forum for breaking down barriers and unifying the cultures.
“People can teach their kids to hate,” said Maddon. “This is what we have to eliminate. Eliminate the small-minded thinking. … You get the kids together, and it will be overcome. I believe that.”
Maddon believes in helping out–even as he orbits the whirlwind parallel universe of MLB. Win or lose, there has been a “Thanksmas”–a blend of THANKSgiving and ChristMAS–that helps the Tampa Bay homeless with holiday meals the last eight years. That’s Maddon’s idea, and he was hands-on with the cooking and serving.
He’s also the same guy who Skyped into the Gibbs High media center last April–from a spring training break at Port Charlotte–to answer questions of journalism students.
And he’s the same guy you would see riding his bike on Bayshore and around Davis Islands or sipping a favorite cabernet at 717 or quaffing a brew at the Tiny Tap or reading the morning newspaper at Starbucks on S. Howard. He resides in accessible Hyde Park, not a gated community or a high rise, where most celebrities live. “I’m comfortable here,” he would explain.
He is, to be incongruously sure, the only manager in MLB with his own gnome likeness and an honorary doctorate of letters. He can talk societal priorities as well as home-cooked pierogies. He’s a Renaissance guy who can also rattle off OBP (On Base Percentage) and WAR (Wins Above Replacement) numbers in his sleep.
In nine years he became an institution around here. His glasses morphed from nerdy to cool. His unorthodox strategies were increasingly emulated throughout baseball.
He loved managing the Rays in his inimitable way, and it showed. He loved living here–and it showed.
But the bottom line for the 60-year-old Maddon was probably this: After nine years, he likely loved living here more than working here. Leaving is about more than maxing out on his marketability. With only a few more shots at the brass ring, he couldn’t wait any longer for what might not happen in this market with all its stadium scenarios always hovering. And he was too classy to note that on the way out.
It won’t be the same without Joe Maddon, even if he does pop back in to check on Ava and take a nostalgic spin on Bayshore.