Joe Maddon Doesn’t Have Many Rules, But He Does Have a Dress Code and Other Bullets

joe maddon speaksThe Cubs are off today (though John Lackey and Ryan Williams will pitch in a minor league game), and I’ll be out and about with the family to see some of Arizona’s natural beauty. And, truly, it is beautiful out here … I just wish it was beautiful in a little less heat. It’ll hit 95 today, which just ain’t my cup of tea.

Well, actually, I do like my cup of tea to be really warm, so maybe that’s not a really apt expression there. Aren’t you glad you read these intros?

  • I know it’ll shock you to learn, but Joe Maddon does not have a strict dress code for his players. Maddon’s attire standards? It boils down to a pretty simple rule (Cubs.com): “If you think you look hot, you wear it.” Fortunately for the Cubs, they’ve got quite a collection of handsome gents who should be able to accommodate that rule. I will also now be living my life by that code, and will be breaking back out so many of my ridiculous(ly awesome) shirts from college.
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  • Maddon also met with a group of about a dozen players to lay out some ground rules for the team (including that dress code), though he describes the rules as more of a forcefield than a fence (CSN): “Guys know if you go past a certain point, you might get stung a little bit. But you don’t have to actually see the fence there.” With the right group of guys in place, that’s an absolutely perfect setup. Maddon doesn’t want to be the one policing every little thing anyway. It’s always better when the group of players can handle that themselves, and they know what it means to get out of line. (Presumably truly out of line – not throwing a guy’s lunch away because he’s eating in the clubhouse during a scrimmage.)
  • Yesterday’s game against the Royals set yet another Spring Training attendance record, at 15,523.
  • Joe Maddon was not concerned about Justin Grimm’s and Neil Ramirez’s ugly results this weekend (Cubs.com). For Ramirez, it was a bit of what we noted (soft contact dribblers that turned into hits), and for Grimm, Maddon believes he was simply challenging hitters too much with the fastball, which doesn’t play all that well in Spring Training when hitters are geared up specifically for that.
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  • Javy Baez had a good game in center field on Saturday night, and Joe Maddon is singing his praises defensively all over the field (Sun-Times).
  • I think I’m getting some recommendations from Amazon for Etekcity products since I bought that lantern from them last week, but this does look like a good scale for dirt cheap.
  • If you missed anything from the weekend, catch yourself up here.
  • And the McDonald’s across from Wrigley Field, the future home of the new hotel in the broader development project, is no more:
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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