This Joe knows how to let go
CHICAGO — Every home game, Joe Girardi sits down for his pregame news conference at Yankee Stadium sporting a T-shirt of a worthwhile cause. It has turned into a nice tradition with the Yankees’ manager — undefeated on the day — touting the endeavor and providing some publicity for those watching on the YES Network.
Here at Wrigley Field, Joe Maddon does the same promotion every Friday. So just once a week, as opposed to as many as seven days in a week. Seems less burdensome, right?
Except that Maddon puts on the Tshirt and smiles after his Friday game.
If you want to know the primary difference between Girardi and Maddon, the two respected managers who have resumed their rivalry this weekend after a two-year respite, that Tshirt presentation disparity best underlines it. I can’t imagine Girardi acting all cheery and talking up a charity following a gut-wrenching loss. To be fair, most major-league skippers would want no part of such an endeavor. Yet that’s precisely what Maddon did on Friday after his Cubs, one strike away from a victory, suffered a 3-2 defeat to Girardi’s Yankees.
“I read the newspapers. I read the front pages,” Maddon said Sunday, before the Cubs and Yankees closed out this three-game series. “I have kids. I have grandkids. I have a foundation (Respect 90) that we deal with a lot of people in very difficult situations. And I see our guys daily meet people out here all the time. At the end of the day, it’s a game.”
On Saturday, the Yankees clobbered the Cubs, 11-6, with Cubs starting pitcher Brett Anderson lasting just one-third of an inning and departing with an ailing back. Maddon had to resort to using catcher Miguel Montero to pitch the eighth inning. So not only did the defending World Series champions suffer an embarrassing loss in front of their own fans, but they lost a member of their starting rotation.
After the game, however, Maddon expressed the most dismay, by far, for outfielder Matt Szczur, calling the decision to designate the bench player for assignment “excruciating,” and said that felt worse than the game’s result.
Girardi, too, recognizes the value of staying positive for his players.
“I think you have to be able to turn the page in this game,” he said Sunday. “Not really even from day-to-day, but from at-bat to at-bat. From pitch to pitch. From fielding play to fielding play. Because we’re out here every day. You have to be able to turn the page. So I think it’s important.”
Now in his 10th year as the Yankees’ manager and 11th season as a major league manager, Girardi has improved in this skill. Nevertheless, catch him at the wrong time, with the wrong reporter asking him the wrong question, and hilarious discomfort can ensue.
Meanwhile, the next time Maddon even comes close to erupting will be the first.
“Listen, I want to win as badly as anybody, and I hate when we lose. I do carry it home sometimes,” he said. “But I like to meditate in the morning so I can get my thoughts together. I try to evaluate exactly what’s going on. Let’s not get carried away. Hyperbole has no place in all of this. It has a tendency to creep in, so for me, really, understanding exactly what’s going on.
“We should have won the first game and did not. It would have been a four-game winning streak. One pitch [Brett Gardner’s ninth-inning homer against the Cubs’ Hector Rondon]. [Saturday] night was a bad night. That’s not a reason to blow anything up, for me.”
Among the many reasons a Yankees-Cubs World Series would be outstanding is the prospect of seeing the two Joes, both of whom take great pride in their tactical skills, go at it. And watching the two men take turns in the news conferences would be the equivalent of a 100-mph flamethrower going against a knuckleballer.