Lou Piniella, the veteran of the Bronx Zoo and many stress filled playoff games, never saw it coming. Laid back Dusty Baker was ground up like hamburger meal.
Now, Joe Maddon gets a hint of the Monster that will envelop his life.
CSNChicago reported:
A trip to New York reminded Joe Maddon of the nowhere-to-hide
scrutiny that comes with this job. But having no OFF switch must sound
ideal to someone who loves the bright lights.
“I’m walking down the street in Times Square to go to this cocktail
party,” Maddon said, recalling his visit for the Lafayette-Lehigh
college football game at Yankee Stadium in late November.
“There was the restaurant with the big windows. And all of a sudden a
bunch of people start pounding on the window, from the inside out,
because they’re all Cubs fans, pointing at Cubs stuff. You get a sense
or feel of that very fast.”
>>> YOU THINK???
You are as far away from the epicenter of Cub fandom in NYC, and you are accosted by monkeys in a zoo!!
This is pressure you have never even imagined, now that the front office has rolled a pulled-pin grenade down the expectation aisle of the team bus.
Maddon has never had the scrutiny, pressure to win and the rabid fan base that is Cub nation. Maddon had been off the radar screen (doing good work by all accounts) in the literal backwater of baseball, Tampa Bay. How he handles the first failures is going to be the litmus test for his future in Chicago.
