The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse - Hardcover

Verducci, Tom

 
9780804190015: The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0804190011 ISBN 13: 9780804190015
Verlag: Crown Archetype, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

The New York Times Bestseller

With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions.

It took 108 years, but it really happened. The Chicago Cubs are once again World Series champions. 

How did a team composed of unknown, young players and supposedly washed-up veterans come together to break the Curse of the Billy Goat? Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre, will have full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon, and the players to tell the story of the Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball. 

Beginning with Epstein's first year with the team in 2011, Verducci will show how Epstein went beyond "Moneyball" thinking to turn around the franchise. Leading the organization with a manual called "The Cubs Way," he focused on the mental side of the game as much as the physical, emphasizing chemistry as well as statistics. 

To accomplish his goal, Epstein needed manager Joe Maddon, an eccentric innovator, as his counterweight on the Cubs' bench.  A man who encourages themed road trips and late-arrival game days to loosen up his team, Maddon mixed New Age thinking with Old School leadership to help his players find their edge.  

The Cubs Way takes readers behind the scenes, chronicling how key players like Rizzo, Russell, Lester, and Arrieta were deftly brought into the organization by Epstein and coached by Maddon to outperform expectations. Together, Epstein and Maddon proved that clubhouse culture is as important as on-base-percentage, and that intangible components like personality, vibe, and positive energy are necessary for a team to perform to their fullest potential. 

Verducci chronicles the playoff run that culminated in an instant classic Game Seven. He takes a broader look at the history of baseball in Chicago and the almost supernatural element to the team's repeated loses that kept fans suffering, but also served to strengthen their loyalty.  

The Cubs Way is a celebration of an iconic team and its journey to a World Championship that fans and readers will cherish for years to come.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tom Verducci is Sports Illustrated's senior baseball writer and a three-time winner of the National Sportswriter of the Year Award. He is also a two-time Emmy Award-winning game and studio analyst for FOX Sports and MLB Network. He was the co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre.

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Chapter 1

Prelude to Seven

Three hours before the most important game for the Chicago Cubs in more than a century, the desk of Joe Maddon in the visiting manager’s office at Progressive Field in Cleveland formed the cluttered tableau of a busy mind. Two opened, half-­eaten, oversized bars of Ghirardelli dark chocolate. Eight-­by-­ten photos of deceased managers Earl Weaver, Chuck Tanner, and Dick Howser. All seven of his color-­coded, two-­sided, World Series lineup cards, complete with every piece of statistical information he needs in the dugout, not to mention a shorthand homage to deceased family and friends. An iPad Pro with stylus, which he used to design the lineup cards. And his smartphone, which buzzed with a text from one of his hometown buddies back in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

Game 7 of the 2016 World Series between the Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, the two teams with the longest championship droughts in baseball, was drawing nigh.

Maddon faced two major questions heading into Game 7: How could his hitters possibly dent Cleveland starting pitcher Corey Kluber, the ace who had held the Cubs to one run over 12 innings in his two starts in the series? And what pitching plan could Maddon cook up to get the ball to his closer, Aroldis Chapman, whom he had taxed in the previous two games?

Maddon began this day with his usual daily meditation session. Then, as he does each game day, he mulled over what to do about his lineup over a cup of caffé Americano. He doodled ideas and batting orders on his iPad with his stylus, and when his lineup was ready he sent it, as always, to the recipients on his lineup chain: club president Theo Epstein, general manager Jed Hoyer, assistant general manager Randy Bush, assistant director of research and development Jeremy Greenhouse, first base coach Brandon Hyde, and director of media relations Peter Chase. The distribution of his lineup was done more as a courtesy, less for approval.

About Epstein, Maddon said, “He’s never vetoed anything. He’ll just write back sometimes, ‘Have you thought about this?’ The last two years they’ve given me a lot of freedom to do what I think is right. And it’s been really enjoyable. We include each other in everything, but when it comes down to on the field, in the dugout, the clubhouse, he gives me all kinds of freedom.”

Hyde then texted the lineup to the players, as he always did. If the lineup includes a significant change out of the ordinary—­such as a position switch or a day off for one his regulars—­Maddon will send a personal text to the player involved to open the door to a conversation.

Maddon is an inveterate lineup tinkerer. He started a different rightfielder in three of the first four World Series games (Chris Coghlan, Jorge Soler, and Jason Heyward). But Maddon did not ruminate long over his Game 7 lineup. He stuck with the same one that he used in Game 6, and why not? His team had thrashed the In­­dians, 9–­3, while cranking out 13 hits. The key change he’d made for that game was to put designated hitter Kyle Schwarber in the number two spot, which moved third baseman Kris Bryant, first baseman Anthony Rizzo, and leftfielder Ben Zobrist down one slot each, to three-­through-­five. In Games 1 and 2 in Cleveland, with the designated hitter used in the American League park, Schwarber had hit fifth. It was the first time he had seen major league pitching in 201 days after rehabbing torn ligaments in his left knee. Amazingly, within a single series Schwarber had turned himself into a legitimate threat at the plate after missing virtually the entire season.

“Yeah, it changes the whole lineup,” Maddon said in his office before Game 7. “I mean, everybody last night: K.B. didn’t mind hitting third, Rizzo didn’t mind hitting fourth, Zobrist, etc. They all like having [Schwarber] slotted in there. It sets up so different for the other side. It really does.”

Still, the Cubs once again would have to contend with the swirling and spinning pitches of Kluber, who would make his second straight start on short rest. He’d flummoxed them in Game 1 primarily with a two-­seam fastball that headed straight for the left-­handed batters’ front hip, only to swoop back over the plate just after they dodged out of what they thought was its intended path. Then Kluber had embarrassed them with a cruel game of bait-­and-­switch curveballs in Game 4. Most of Kluber’s curves tracked the strike zone long enough to entice the Chicago hitters to swing, only to veer into the dirt or off the plate at the last second. You could almost hear his curveballs snicker as they pulled their trickery time and time again. In Game 4, the Cubs swung at 49 percent of Kluber’s pitches that were not in the strike zone, the highest chase rate by any team against the right-­hander all year.

Maddon knew if the Cubs took the same reckless approach against Kluber, they would likely ensure a 108th consecutive season for the franchise without a world championship. What concerned him most was that almost everywhere he looked on his color-­coded lineup card, Maddon saw youth: Addison Russell, 22; Schwarber, 23; Javier Baez, 23; Bryant, 24; and Willson Contreras, 24. Only one other team in World Series history ever started so many players under age 25 in a Game 7, and that team, the “Impossible Dream” Boston Red Sox of 1967, played at home, and lost, 7–­2, to the St. Louis Cardinals. Now Maddon had to hope that a lineup packed with young hitters could show the discipline it had lacked against Kluber twice previously, this time on the road and with the World Series on the line.

“We’re just trying to hit the ball up in the zone, and trying not to chase spin down,” Maddon said. “Those are the two things we’re trying to accomplish. The lefties must be on the [two-­seam] comebacker, of course. But we’ve got to find out early where Kluber is at. This is his third game in nine days. So you don’t know if all that is going to be present today. For me the biggest thing is for our youngsters to not chase.

“Zobrist does that. Addison, on a good day . . . after Addison’s day yesterday I imagine he will not chase spin today. Contreras is in swing mode and Baez is in swing mode. We’ve been trying to get them not to do that. Yesterday, if you watched Baez’s BP . . . he almost had two hits up the middle. At least he moved the ball. But we’ve got to get them out of swing mode and not chase spin. So, yes, we talked about it: we are not swinging at spin today.

“I just think with these kids, give them another year or two. They can hear it, but the training is still taking place.”

A year or two? The game was just hours away.

As for his pitching plan, Maddon knew he would start with Kyle Hendricks, the low-­key, low-­velocity control artist, and end with Chapman, the hardest-­throwing pitcher on the planet. But how could he bridge the gap between them?

Starter John Lackey was available, but, as Maddon said, the Cleveland lineup, with its heavy dose of left-­handed hitters, “is a bad matchup for him.”

Jake Arrieta, who threw 102 pitches only the night before?

“No,” Maddon said. “I mean, he’s like way out” if the game went extra innings. Arrieta was so far out of his thinking that Maddon didn’t even list him on his lineup card among his available relievers.

The key piece to the planned bridge was another starting pitcher, Jon Lester, who had had two days of rest since throwing 90 pitches in his Game 5...

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Verlag
Crown Archetype
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0804190011
ISBN 13 
9780804190015
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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