31st Annual Cubs Convention – January 15-17, 2016: Joe Maddon

This is my ninth annual report on the annual Chicago Cubs fan convention.  I’m not going to report on the big sessions with the Ricketts family or Theo and Jed.  Those have been in all the newspapers and elsewhere.  Instead, I wanted to report on a session they had with Joe Maddon.  In a separate post tomorrow, I will mention some other, miscellaneous things.

The session we were at was called “Morning Joe.”  Ron Coomer hosted.  Ron led off with a few questions and then opened it to the fans.  While we¹ were all impressed by Joe Maddon as a manager, because of the results he got last year, listening to him talk about how he manages and why was even more impressive.

Maddon said that when he first started interviewing for manager jobs, he told the team he was interviewing with that his only rule was to run hard to first.  (Last year he phrased that as “respect 90 [feet]”).  If you did that, everything else followed.  For pitchers, since he was interviewing in AL and pitchers don’t bat over there, his rule for them was to get into their defense and work on it.  That really does get to the essence of the game.  If the position players and the pitchers each do this one thing, you won’t need to worry about anything else.  Because if they do this, they’ll do everything else right, too.  (As an aside, let me note that the best fielding Cubs pitcher is Travis Wood.  One simple example.  Next time you see him pitch, either at the park or on TV, watch him throw to first on a ground ball back to the pitcher.  He doesn’t underhand it or give it one of these little flips.  He takes the ball and throws it, properly, like an infielder.  A simple throw that won’t get messed up.  Just like Greg Maddux did – and he got eighteen Gold Gloves for fielding as a pitcher.)

Joe said that the defining moment of the season was the Giants series at Wrigley Field in early August, especially the first game when he took Jason Hammel out after four innings.  That was the moment the playoffs began.  That was when he started managing like it was the playoffs.  If they Cubs had lost that game, they could have lost the series, and then who knows.  As it was, they won the game and went on to sweep the four-game series from the defending World Series champions.

Given all of the money that baseball players make today, you wouldn’t think the money they get for playing in the playoffs is all that important.  The players on each team divide up the money that they get among themselves, the coaches, etc.²  This year the full share for the World Series-winning Kansas City Royals was $370,069.03.  For the Cubs, who awarded sixty full shares, the most of any of the ten playoff teams, each share was worth $122,327.59.  For people like Jon Lester, etc., this is pocket change.  But, as Madden said, for coaches, this is real money.  It’s a huge deal.

For the young players coming up, Madden said the key thing for him to do was to not give them more to think about.  Instead of complicating things, simplify.  Take things away.  The more you worry, the more mistakes you make.  (In the “Down on the Farm” session on Sunday, Jason McLeod, Cubs’ Senior Vice President for Scouting and Player Development, called this “paralysis by analysis.”)

Joe said he will use goofy line-ups in spring training as sort of a test drive, to see what works.

Among the books Madden likes (Joe reads a lot) are The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, books by John Wooden and Malcom Gladwell, and James Michener novels.

His favorite mottos include: “Never let the pressure exceed the pleasure” (which we heard a lot last season); “Discipline yourself you no one else has to” (from John Wooden); “Err on the side of aggressiveness” (Fernando Perez – played for the Rays and we had him in spring training a couple of years ago); and “Integrity has no need of rule.”

Finally, Joe said he had never experienced anything like (i.e., the Cubs Convention).  He told John Lackey and Ben Zobrist, you won’t believe this. 

He said it is unique to be supported by “people like you” and that Cubs fans are not fair weather fans (which I have the pictures to prove and as Eddie Vedder said in a song).  Maddon said he would look out of the dugout during the season, and look to the upper deck and say to himself, there’s somebody in the last seat.  He was amazed – and, I think, appreciative.
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¹ When I say “we,” I mean all four of us.  We were all able to make to the Convention this year:

² Per the Chicago Tribune here are the rules for determining the players’ shares:

“The players’ pool [in 2015] reached a record high of $69,882,149.26. That money comes from 50 percent of the gate receipts from the two Wild Card games; 60 percent of the gate receipts from the first three games of the Division Series; 60 percent of the gate receipts from the first four games of the League Championship Series; and 60 percent of the gate receipts from the first four games of the World Series. …

Only players who were on the major league roster the entire season were entitled to vote on how the shares were distributed, and they automatically qualified for a full share.”

Obviously, the fewer shares you award, the more each share is worth.  Of the four teams who made the league championship series, the Mets were the stingiest, awarding the fewest shares and, thereby, making each of their shares worth more.

If you are wondering why the money from only the first three or four games in each series is included in calculating the players’ shares, see the 1919 Chicago “Black” Sox.

UPDATE (1/18/16 8:00 PM): I added a link to the Eddie Vedder song "All the Way."