Try Not to Suck

January 15, 2018
Sports journalists Chastain (100 Things Jets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die) and Rogers offer a breezy but detailed look at the life and career of Joe Maddon, the manager who led the Chicago Cubs to victory in the 2016 World Series. The authors follow Maddon from his youth in Hazleton, Pa., through his undergraduate years as a baseball player at Lafayette College, and into a short career playing for the California Angels, an organization that emphasized “the lost process of apprenticeship” and that encouraged Maddon to develop his talent for coaching. The authors convincingly illustrate how Maddon combined his knowledge of baseball fundamentals with “the analytics of the game way in advance of analytics driving the game as they later would,” which helped establish his reputation as a loose, freewheeling coach who, as one player put it, “was talking millennially before it became the way to talk to guys.” While the authors discuss Maddon’s more controversial moments, such as his pitching decisions in games six and seven of the Cubs World Series games, the book is more hagiographic than critical (“Not only did he have athletic ability, he had a natural curiosity”). This is a perceptive look at an exciting baseball manager, but one that will be of most interest to die-hard Cubs fans.

March 15, 2018
Maddon is the manager who led the Chicago Cubs to a World Series title in 2016, the team's first championship in 108 years. He's a baseball lifer who wended his way through the minor leagues for years as a coach, hitting instructor, and scout before eventually moving to the majors in the Los Angeles Angels organization, then leading the Tampa Bay Rays to the World Series in 2008, and finally coming to the Cubs in 2015. As veteran baseball reporters Chastain and Rogers make clear in this engaging biography, Maddon is an excellent tactician and a gentle motivator who keeps everyone on the team involved. But what really separates him from most managers is his personal style, which boasts a winning combination of all-around likability and disarming irreverence (the latter typified by his instructing all Cub players to wear onesies on a flight to L.A.). Chastain covers the Rays for MLB.com, and Rogers covers the Cubs for ESPN.com, so they have a wealth of anecdotes and insights to share. A solid baseball book about a fascinating man.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)