Tampa Bay's Joe Maddon

I have developed an interest in the Tampa Bay Rays for a number of reasons. They have not been winners in the past, their Manager, Joe Maddon, is from my home town and he has a somewhat unconventional approach to the game.

Following are some excerpts from a USA Today piece on 9/23/2008:

‘Joe Maddon might intentionally walk your best hitter with the bases loaded. He might use five outfielders against you. He most certainly won't shy away from breaking with tradition if he thinks it will help his Tampa Bay Rays win.

The manager of baseball's surprise team is an out-of-the-box thinker who insists he doesn't make those decisions by the seat of his pants. The seat of a bicycle is another story.

An avid rider, Maddon often cruises around major league cities trying to conjure ways for the Rays to win. This season it has worked, as he has managed Tampa Bay to its first winning season and playoff berth in its 11 seasons.

"It's therapeutic," Maddon says. "Managing definitely is a passion. But bike riding (is), too, if that makes any sense."

Maddon, who turned 54 the day before the Rays clinched their playoff spot Saturday, has been waiting for this moment longer than the fans — 31 years in the Angels organization before he became Tampa Bay manager in 2006; since he was a 6-year-old in blue-collar Hazleton, Pa., where his fiercely proud 75-year-old mom still works at the Third Base Luncheonette.

He's a wine connoisseur and a voracious reader; a student and tinkerer of everything from baseball to the human psyche. And that combination, unusual as it might seem in a locker room, all comes together during his rides.

"When I'm able to ride, I feel a lot freer in my thinking," Maddon says.

"Free thinker" is how Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia describes his former bench coach of six years, with whom he won a World Series in 2002. "If Joe wasn't in baseball, he would have been an incredible engineer," Scioscia says. "He's always looking at things from the perspective of, 'Let me break it down and see if there's a better way to do it.' "

That could mean positioning five players in the outfield against the Red Sox's David Ortiz or intentionally walking the Texas Rangers' Josh Hamilton with the bases loaded. It could mean daring Rays pitcher Scott Kazmir to try to hang a slider. It could mean trying to persuade players and coaches to read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

"I thought I was doing stuff by the seat of my pants," Maddon says of how Blink changed him. "All that stuff I thought about on bike rides gets all stirred up in a vat. That's what instinct is."
Perhaps Maddon's greatest skill is his ability to feed players the heavy stuff and not lose them.

"He's a genius and a good guy," designated hitter Cliff Floyd says.’

Link to the USA Today article:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/rays/2008-09-22-rays-maddon_N.htm