Joe Maddon Has A Vision

Maddon brought his jug runs and spray charts and pesky offensive message to Tampa Bay, and the result this year is a team that plays like an East Coast version of the Angels. Tampa Bay led the American League in stolen bases, grounded into the fewest double plays and had the second most walks, behind Boston. "Joe's brilliance is that he knows what needs to be tinkered with and which deep-rooted fundamentals to leave alone," says Angels manager Mike Scioscia, who had Maddon as his bench coach from 2000 through '05. "He's unique because of his ability to be progressive and traditional."

JOE MADDON was supposed to be a football player. Born and raised in Hazleton, a Pennsylvania coal town 95 miles northwest of Philadelphia, he was a decent basketball player and a standout shortstop and pitcher at Hazleton High. But it was as a quarterback that he set pulses racing. He was known as Broad Street Joe, a reference to one of Hazleton's main drags; his teammates also called him Monsignor because, no matter how much they egged him on, they couldn't get him to curse. Broad Street Joe was recruited by Princeton and Penn and received a letter from Roger Staubach trying to lure him to Navy. But in 1973 he accepted a football scholarship from a college closer to home, Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., and became an economics major.

Hazleton was and still is a tight-knit, blue-collar melting pot, a provincial place that once sent more kids into the mines than out into the world. The son of an Italian father, Joe (who shortened the family name from Maddoninni), and a Polish mother, Albina, Maddon grew up in an apartment over his dad's plumbing shop on a block that teemed with aunts, uncles and cousins. It was a Rockwellian upbringing in its own way, steeped in the importance of family, respect for others and the value of hard work. Maddon, who moved west some 30 years ago, returns to Hazleton to visit family and friends for a week every Christmas. Joe Sr. passed away in 2002, six months before the Angels won the World Series with Maddon as bench coach. But Albina—everyone calls her Beanie—still lives in that apartment and works as a waitress and cook at the Third Base Luncheonette, where she has been behind the counter for 50 years.

As a sophomore at Lafayette, Maddon was penciled in at starting quarterback, but he quit the team before the season to concentrate on baseball. He had become a catcher, and in 1975, after his junior season, he left school to sign with the Angels as a minor league free agent. It didn't take long for his big league dreams to fizzle: In four seasons he failed to rise higher than Class A, batting .267 with five home runs in a total of 170 games. But Maddon made an impression on coaches and teammates in other ways. He had a sharp mind for the game—probably, he says, because baseball never came to him as instinctively as football and therefore required more study and interest in teaching methods. He was outgoing and laid-back and genuine, the kind of guy who connected with anyone and everyone. And he was such a good cook that his teammates held auctions for the rights to share an apartment with him. Says Peter Ciccarelli, the general manager of the Class A Salinas (Calif.) Angels, when Maddon was there in '77 and '78, "I told anyone who would listen, This guy can't play, but he's going to be a manager some day."

The Angels released Maddon in 1979, but the following year they offered him a scouting job, launching his long climb up the organizational ladder. He finally made the majors in '94, when he became bullpen coach under manager Buck Rodgers. By the early 2000s he was a franchise institution, part of the furniture at the Big A, but his mind was wandering. He interviewed for the Red Sox managing job in '03 and impressed general manager Theo Epstein, but was passed over for Terry Francona. When the Rays' job opened two years later, Maddon jumped at it. "I needed this job to get my thinking out ahead of me again," he says. "When you're in one job for too long you become comfortable. And I don't like being comfortable."

HOW MUCH impact does a manager truly have on his team? Even those who hire and fire them aren't sure. "How much credit a manager should get has always been a mystery to me," says Hunsicker. "But I can honestly say that Joe has had a bigger impact on this team than any manager I've been associated with."

As the losses mounted during his first two seasons in Tampa Bay (the Rays lost 101 games in 2006 and 96 the next year), Maddon concentrated on remaking the clubhouse culture, getting players to buy into the idea that the Trop could be home to a winning team and getting rid of those who didn't. But this year, on the first day of spring training, he told his team he thought they were good enough to make the playoffs—that, as pitching coach Jim Hickey puts it, "the scholarship program was over, and it was time to be accountable and productive."

Maddon can impose such expectations without being overbearing because he's so upbeat and positive. He's a devoted spouter of self-help aphorisms ("Attitude is a decision!") and screener of inspirational T-shirts; this year's model is emblazoned with the bizarre equation 9=8, a reminder coined by Maddon this spring that nine players working together could bring home one of the majors' eight postseason spots. And unlike the fiery Piniella, Maddon is a Zen breeze in the clubhouse. With his Renaissance man personality comes a suggestion that baseball, while important, is not a life-or-death affair, an attitude that helped keep a young team loose in the heat of its first pennant race. "He doesn't ram things down your throat," says Kazmir. "He's always communicating, always teaching, but he's very easygoing. "He just keeps preaching that we should believe in ourselves. He's not like any other manager I've had."

Maddon, a dedicated oenophile, unwinds after every game with a nice California red in his office. ("He'll come out and say, 'This is great. You have to try this Merlot,'" says Jim Hickey. "I'm like, 'Yeah, Joe, we just kicked the Yankees' ass. I'm going to have a cold beer.'") But Maddon balances that sophistication with a sense that he's having as much fun on Tampa Bay's unlikely ride as anyone. On one September road trip the players decided everyone should wear T-shirts bearing designs by ultrahip tattoo artist Ed Hardy on travel days. Veteran outfielder and clubhouse leader Cliff Floyd bought dozens of shirts, and Maddon was among the first to pick one off the rack in the clubhouse. "It had a bull's-eye on it, and it said, truth and faith," Maddon says. "Those are two pretty good words to put on any T-shirt."