Joe Maddon Cubs World Series Champion Manager Talks -Breaking the Curse AlanAlfordSportsTalkShow.com

So yes, I'm joined with Joe Maddon here on the Allen Alpha Sports Talk show. Always a pleasure to have him here on the show. So talk first and foremost about being here at the Tampa Baseball Museum during opening day and sharing this experience with a lot of fans. Kind of interesting. I didn't know about it till recently. RV told me about it. I love the building. I love the place. I love what it's what it represents, what it stands for and all the little memorabilia here is really impressive including the baseballs behind us. So for opening day it's actually the absolutely appropriate to be in a place like this for opening day. Great crowd. The fans of the people are wonderful and I get to see Matty Joyce, Roberto Hernandez, Joe McGrain and Richie Garcia. I had no idea they're gonna be here. Okay, in fact, talk about you know Matt Joyce. The fact that you got a chance to manage him. What made Matt Joyce so special? Well, Matty, one of the smoothest swings we have that I've had as a manager. Big power. He became a much better outfielder while he was with us here in Tampa Bay but really just he's just a good fella. He's this wonderful, wonderful teammate. Great guy to be around on a daily basis but big power, big power and like I said he got he became a better outfielder and a better base runner. We got him from Detroit. Got to work on him real quickly and try to fix up the other parts of his game because the bat was really, really that good. Yes and he talked about how he had a rough opening day. 0 for 4 but you didn't blink an eye at it. You still was very, very calm about it. No, no. He's you know that's just one day. I mean we play 162 games. You got playoffs. You got all kinds of stuff. People get overreact too much in our game. Right now something's gonna happen today in the opening day. People are gonna get upset or overly excited too. So anyway, Matty Matty demonstrated like really early on in the spring training what he was capable of doing and then of course you just got to be patient and give it some time and that's what you do with a player like him. So none of that surprised any of us. Yeah. None of us. One thing that you're really flattered about the fact that we're in front of all these baseballs and all of these people are from Tampa. Talk about that. That's crazy, right? I mean this area has such a wonderful baseball tradition. These are some like really big names too. It's not just names and the weird part is I know a lot of these guys and I grew up in Pennsylvania. I've worked down here obviously but a lot of the names on the wall, if you're a baseball fan you know about these guys. So it's really an impressive situation. The people of the Tampa Bay Area have to be proud of it. If you're a baseball fan you got to be really big proud of all of that. We're in Al Lopez's Hall of Fame situation over here. This building. I love the building. I love the area. Ybor City, one of my favorite spots in the area. So all this stuff contributes to this legacy. The Tampa Bay legacy of baseball, Major League Baseball. It's that impressive. And speaking of that, would you be okay with the Tampas coming in here? The Braves coming in here permanently for the Tampa Bay? They should. They should come on this side of the water. I mean listen, I love St. Pete. I'm a member of the St. Pete Country Club. I think it's great what they've done down there. Spectacular. But to really I think support the team it needs to be on this side of the pond. When you do do that you're making it more available to more people on a nightly basis. You can't permit whatever jealousies of whatever kind to to interfere with the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to have them over here and with that you have your best chance of success for a long period of time. And I think there's some spots available maybe over by Hillsborough from what I'm hearing. The Community College. It makes all the sense in the world. So just just do what's right for what's best for the most people in the area which I think would be that. Yes and if they did make it into a reality if they were here would you kind of help the team out a bit? You know show up make appearances? I don't think that they want me to. I mean I'm fine. I have a really strict golf schedule to adhere to on a weekly basis. I'm here for six months. Pennsylvania for six months. I'll be going back up there right around May 1st and then I'll come back again for the winter months starting like November, December. The Rays are doing just fine. Cash and the boys. Eric Neander. Great group. The new ownership. I got to meet them. They're in very very good hands and I really believe we're getting at the ballpark here with the to really re-energize or energize the fan base. It's going to permit them to be here for a long period of time and be successful for a long period of time. Is it still something still surreal to you that you broke the curse for the getting that World Series? Just up there. We were up there for a 10-year anniversary in Chicago. All the boys were there except for maybe four guys. Yeah when you it's 10 years also which is kind of nuts. So when you replay that and you get the the folks the fans coming up to you it really meant a lot. It meant a lot to a lot of people and from that perspective I'm eternally grateful to be part of all that. So yeah it was 108 years. That's a long time and we had a special group. A very charismatic group of guys as well as really good baseball players. So to be to be a member of that group is really really special and yes I do permit myself to think about that on occasion. And finally if somebody wants to make it to the major leagues. Somebody you know you've seen great talent. You've seen some guys are okay. What advice can you give them if they want to make it and be successful in the major leagues? Well it's it's really everybody will say they want to do that but there's a lot of sacrifice involved. There's a lot of work involved. The biggest thing too is also I think to when somebody might be negative to you say that you cannot do something like that. Maybe respectfully say thank you but continue to follow your dreams. I mean you'll know you'll know when it's time to give it up. You'll know when it's time to put it down and it's not gonna happen for me. But if I listened everybody to tell me that I couldn't do something I wouldn't be standing talking with you right now. So stick with it. Know there's gonna be sacrifice involved. You want to work harder than anybody else ever worked and eventually you might come out the other side. Thank you so much. Always a pleasure Joe Maddon. Same here. It's always a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming out. My pleasure. You're welcome. Anytime.