Chicago Cubs managers don’t usually walk in and immediately express their love of Wrigley Field — see: Dusty Baker — but Joe Maddon made an impression on fans with his comments about the Friendly Confines.
The presser unveiling him, held at the Cubby Bear because of Wrigley Field renovations, showed Maddon at his best: enthusiastic about baseball, enthusiastic about the Cubs, optimistic about the team’s future, and gushing about the prospect of playing at Wrigley Field. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
On a manic Monday, the North Side’s newest hipster sprayed to all fields in what felt like one big, caffeinated run-on sentence. He talked about “magical’’ Wrigley Field; about The Cousin Eddie, his recreational vehicle; about the “talented young players’’ his new team has collected; about his desire to live downtown, not in “a gated community;’’ and about “Gladiator’’ (the movie, not the disgraced former Cubs power hitter who said he bulked up using Flintstones vitamins).
Maddon is fresh, enthusiastic and innocent. He also has no idea. He knows a lot about baseball, but he has no idea, understand? Nobody does who hasn’t been in the middle of this living, breathing tragedy we know as the Cubs.
But the 60-year-old certainly is excited.
And this will go over well: the first shot and a beer were on him.