Baseball season opens March 30, debuting a number of rule changes designed to accomplish one or more of the following: Attract a younger fan base, make the game move faster, incentivize more base hits and fewer strikeouts.
It has been often noted that baseball’s evolution in many ways mirrors that of our country: the movement East to West, struggles over racism and the replacement of family ownership of teams with corporate financial structures. Now big data via the analytics revolution has dramatically transformed the game while diminishing the on-field manager’s role.
Joe Maddon recently published The Book of Joe: Trying Not to Suck at Baseball and Life, a memoir. I reached out to the former Major League manager (a three-time manager of the year who was recently with the Los Angeles Angels before being fired at the end of last season) to talk about all of this and more.
Maddon practices daily meditation, quotes French novelist and essayist Albert Camus and Ernest Hemingway in his book and notes that Mark Twain would be first on his wish list for dinner guests. Since he enjoys reading, I suggested that rather than asking him the usual questions about managerial strategy — “Why did you take the pitcher out in the eighth inning?” — I would present questions drawn from books that I’ve enjoyed that might relate to how the game of baseball has evolved or otherwise stimulate reflection. Maddon spoke from his home in Long Beach.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Capital & Main: Pat Conroy is one of your favorite writers. In his novel The Great Santini, he describes an authoritarian character based on his father, who was very destructive. You write about coaches and managers who use this domineering style. Society has changed, and ballplayers are different today. How did you adapt to these changes?
Joe Maddon: When I was growing up, men were obviously in charge. As athletes we rarely questioned our coach’s methods or whether what they were doing was right or wrong. They are the coach so they must be right. Today’s player is not afraid to ask questions or even disagree with the coach. If you can’t communicate back and forth with players, there is going to be some kind of problem, and it’s not good for team morale. Today we have sports psychology and coaches for “mental skills,” and you are not considered “mentally soft” for utilizing those resources.
So, definitions of masculinity have changed for the better, I think. You can allow yourself to express a problem or so-called weakness without being put down. I do think women had a lot to do with this shift, demanding different kinds of behaviors from men, more of an openness, you might say. This has been all for the good.
“Baseball front offices are run now by people with college degrees. They have been schooled in business administration and use analytics to measure every aspect of the game.”
Albert Camus is quoted throughout your book. In his book The Rebel, revolt against oppression can liberate an “authentic” self. Why does that idea appeal to you?
I’m a product of the ’60s and the ’70s, when I was growing up and going to college. I was really anti-authority. I grew my hair long, but I wasn’t a pot smoker or into drugs or an activist. But I always thought I was a nonconformist in a conforming society.
It kind of falls under the category of finding your voice or authenticity, as Camus writes. In order to do that, you must leave your comfort zone and do things that may meet with resistance. This is a form of revolt. That’s the way I’ve approached managing. If you always find yourself on the side of popular opinion, very often you are not thinking for yourself.
A few decades ago, 20% of Major League players were African American. That has declined to about 7% today. What can be done to create a path for more African American big leaguers?
We have to look more closely at strategies that encourage younger African American kids to choose baseball over other sports. There has to be more money and resources invested on fields and equipment in urban areas. Baseball faces other challenges as well. In basketball or football, for example, there is a much more expedited path to the NBA or NFL whereas in baseball there is generally much more time spent in the minor leagues, with no guarantee of ever reaching the majors, where the money is. The glamor and influence, even on the Major League Baseball level, does not come close to the NBA and to some extent the NFL. Think of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or LeBron James.
In Christopher Lash’s 1995 book The Revolt of the Elites, he argued that the new elites are not only corporate managers but also “experts” who control and manipulate information for their own benefit. Today there are a lot of “experts” and numbers crunchers in baseball. What has been their impact?
Baseball front offices are run now by people with college degrees. They have been schooled in business administration and use analytics to measure every aspect of the game. It’s gradually moving away from traditional baseball based on wisdom and field experience. Today, analytics are relied upon because it provides a safety net for decision making. If you just rely on the numbers all the time, it’s going to be right sometimes and wrong sometimes. But when it’s wrong, data people can always say that it’s a large sample size so if you stay with the analytics based decision long enough, the predictions are going to play out.
But you can’t do medicine by numbers alone nor can you manage a baseball team. All this data disguises the fact that the people doing this don’t really have a great feel for what they’re doing and they need equations to tell them what to do next. That’s why I stand on the top rail of the dugout during the game, to feel the energy of the moment and look into a player’s eyes when I need to.
“Most of the time when a manager gets angry with a team or gets punitive, they are really trying to protect themselves. You’re not trying to help the players; you’re trying to lay the blame on them.”
Labor historian David Montgomery notes how the corporations extracted knowledge and control from workers and placed it with factory managers. In a similar vein, you’ve said that Major League managers are now “middle managers,” with greatly reduced influence because general managers have more power. How has this impacted the game?
It’s all about control from the front office people who are really trying to take over the entire baseball product. It’s more of a bureaucratic approach to the game that gets in the way of the greatness of individual players. The game has moved to where they’re trying to make everybody and everything the same. Organizations don’t have an identity anymore. Throw elevated fastballs. Starting pitchers should not pitch three times through the batting order. There is a premium on hitters trying to hit home runs so it’s okay to strike out a lot. Don’t try to steal bases because you might lose an out in the inning. We don’t want you to go from first to third on hits. Eliminate the hit and run or sacrifice bunts.
All this makes the game less interesting. Now coaches and managers are hired based on their understanding of technologies like Trackman and Rapsodo [devices that measure bat launch angles or pitch spin rates] rather than baseball knowledge and experience dealing with players.
You write about coming from a working-class background. Has your experience with players shown you that people from tougher, more disadvantaged backgrounds — people who had to struggle — turn out to be resilient ballplayers?
When I go back to my hometown of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, it really does smack me in the face. My dad was a plumber. My grandparents were coal miners. One of my grandfathers died from black lung disease. If you messed up, you got your ass kicked by somebody, and you were raised by the entire community. If you tried to do something really inappropriate, somebody would grab you, whether it was an uncle, a teacher or coach or your parents. You couldn’t get away with anything. At the same time nobody felt sorry for you. It does harden you and makes you tougher coming from a rougher background. So little things just kind of flow off your back a bit more readily.
There are times in your career where you were angry for different reasons. The organizer Saul Alinsky wrote in his book Rules for Radicals that you should only get angry when you intend to. Can anger be productive in sports?
As a manager I have used anger as a tool but I agree with Alinsky that it has to be the right moments to gain the result that I’m looking for and therefore it needs to be calculated anger. I’m thinking of anger with an umpire in the short term to achieve a positive result or to support a player that feels wronged by a bad call. Anger can clear the air in a sense, but if it’s not understood, it can eat away at you and be destructive if you hold onto it or use it for the wrong purpose.
Remember, most of the time when a manager gets angry with a team or gets punitive, they are really trying to protect themselves. You’re not trying to help the players; you’re trying to lay the blame on them. This is often done to satisfy the media or fans who think this is the appropriate way to coach, especially with guys making a lot of money.
“My notion is that if you take care of the seconds, the minutes and hours and days will take care of themselves.”
Major League Baseball is initiating changes this year to make the game more interesting and lure fans. What do you think of the rule changes?
The game has gotten to the point now where it’s tough to watch. The one thing that I’m really excited about this year is the clock because that’s the only rule change that has been necessary. The problem all along has not been the length but the pace of the game. Banning the extreme shift will encourage left-handed hitters to try to hit more home runs so strikeouts will still be high. I’m curious about making the bases bigger, which might mean more base stealing attempts, which will make the game more exciting.
You quote Hemingway’s advice to write “one true sentence” in order to overcome writer’s block. It seems as if there is a Zen-like simplicity to the rituals you have before and during games.
My notion is that if you take care of the seconds, the minutes and hours and days will take care of themselves. I try to stay focused on that because otherwise anxiety takes you to the future where that emotion lives. Much of the time whatever negative you might be concerned about is in your imagination. I try to operate in the present tense and to teach myself to remain there. I meditate and stay in the moment and breathe and find myself that way. I let go of what might be other people’s thoughts or patterns. I’m searching for clarity.
If you are involved in Major League Baseball, it’s all about how you structure your day to create a comfort and rhythm that makes the day attractive. When I walk down the tunnel into the stadium, that’s probably the most relaxing moment of the day.
You also note that Hemingway wrote that old men “do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
I don’t want to be that guy.
