So long Joe Maddon and thank you so very much
Another baseball season has come to an end. For Cub fans, it's wait til next year. For long time Cub fans, that's not much different than most of the way our regular seasons have ended...until the last few years.
I entered the atmosphere in June of 1952. If you were a Cub fan at that time, you picked an okay team. Sure, they hadn't won the World Series since 1908, but lots of teams had a worse history. The Dodgers and Phillies had yet to win one...not a single championship. And even though they hadn't won the ultimate prize in forty-four years, they got to the Series fairly often. It was just seven years since their last appearance and they won the pennant fairly often in the 1930-20's. You had to assume another one was right around the corner. That's what you get for doing that assume thing. Little did I know what I would be getting myself into.
Let me tell you how bad it was to be a Cubs fanatic in those early days of my youth. My first favorite player was a catcher name Sammy Taylor. The reason I liked him was because he hit the first walk-off home run that I saw. I have no idea of the year or the team that left the field in shame that afternoon. I only remember the ball hitting the top of the wall and bouncing into the bleachers. The Cubs were winners that day and I had a new hero.
That home run was one of thirty-three Sammy hit in his career. If this guy was going to be my baseball hero, (and no offense to Sammy because there aren't many people good enough to play in the major leagues, much less last six years and hit thirty or so home runs) I should have known fandom would have ups and down....and with the Cubs it was mostly downs.
The Cubs were so bad in those years that my following baseball idols included a guy who played across town, Luis Aparicio and two others from the east and west coasts, Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax.
As the years moved on, the Cubs would occasionally tease us. The late 60's-early 70's gave us the first tease. They finally broke through to the post-season in 1984, only to break our hearts in San Diego. Who could forget what seemed to be the ultimate heartbreak in 2003 against the Marlins? Then there was the shock of 2007 and 2008. Getting swept out of the first round while having what seemed like the best team. You would have thought dealing with this crap for fifty or so years would have eased all that pain. Yeah, that's what you get for thinking.
Then comes the Theo Epstein era. It's time for a rebuild. This time it's a major rebuild. We're going to do it from the ground up. We'll fix the farm system, watch our own players mature and reap their success by being constant contenders for championships. That's right..plural championships. Yada, yada, yada...we've heard that before, haven't we? It's hard to overcome the skepticism when you've heard and watched the same shit for almost six decades.
The rebuild was slow. We watched some horrible baseball during those early days...even by Cubs standards. But we did see some of the players, we heard about and had hope for start to reach the big leagues. Then the Cubs made one of their biggest moves. They hired Joe Maddon to manage this team. Management saw what Joe did in Tampa. He took a team with little resources to a World Series. They figured he was the guy who could mold very young players into champions.
In his first season, 2015, the Cubs record improved by twenty-four games. They went from seventy-three wins to ninety-seven. They went from last place to winning a wild card spot in the playoffs. They went from not even sniffing the post-season to winning the wild card game and beating the Cardinals in the first round, before losing to the Mets in the NLCS. It was a great start...but the best was right around the corner.
We all know about 2016. The Cubs won their division. They had the best record in MLB. They defeated the Giants and then the Dodgers to win their first National League pennant in seventy-one years. They then defeated the Indians to win the World Series. It was their first championship in more than one hundred years. The longest drought in professional sports history came to an end that November night in Cleveland. All the anguish for generations of Cubs fans was over. Joe Maddon and the Cubs were at the top of the baseball world. Who would have ever believed that?
The following two seasons brought two more playoff appearances. Yeah, they didn't win or even make it to World Series, but in the world of Cubs baseball, four straight years in the playoffs is unheard of. Nothing close to it had occurred in modern times. This was the golden era of Chicago Cubs baseball.
In spite of all of this there were stirrings of discontent in the Cubs front office. How the 2018 season ended, left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Success spoiled everyone. For the front office, players and even the fans, making the playoffs wasn't good enough anymore. 2019 was World Series or bust. Cubs management not so subtly let everyone know this by not extending Maddon's contract. It was win or else!
This last season didn't go as everyone was hoping it would. It was two steps forward followed by one or two steps back. They had the best record in league at home and then they would go on the road and lose. For most of the year, they led their division, but never could put away the Cardinals or Brewers. The Cubs sealed their own fate by losing nine games in a row. The flaws that everyone saw in the team finally showed up bigtime. For the first time since 2014, the playoffs would be without the Chicago Cubs.
We all knew who was going to be the fall guy for this. It was far from a surprise when it was announced that Joe Maddon would be moving on. Managers being fired/not extended is nothing new. Baseball management is fickle and impatient. Five years is a good run. Most don't last that long with a single team. In Cub-world that's a lifetime. Compare that to some of the other managers I've spent sixty or so years trying to forget. Renteria, Elia, Trebelhorn, Michaels, Franks, Essian, Quade and OMG those College of Coaches. I'm shuttering just at the mention of those.
We'll never think that way of Joe Maddon. He's at the pinnacle of Cubs management. He's at the top of Cubs lore. He's a major part of accomplishing what so many of us never thought would come true. But like so many great things, they come to end. The time for Joe to leave was now. I'm not sorry he's gone, but I am a little sad.
So to Joe Maddon, it was a great run. Good luck in whatever is next. So long Joe....and thank you so very much!