He Could Pass for Another...

Something about the Cubs’ Joe Maddon has been bugging me for ages, but I could never put a finger on it till this week.  Here it is:  Maddon could pass for another Bill Veeck, or his younger brother or at worst first cousin.

Just like Maddon, the onetime owner of the Indians, Browns and White Sox was a man as decent as he was insecure.  (Non-decent people in baseball?  Start with George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, and don’t forget Milton Bradley.)  Maddon needs for everyone to know he’s the smartest guy in the room, Veeck wanted all the world to know how many books he read, and what kind.  Maddon presents himself as a kid from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a variation on Veeck’s common-man persona.  But at some point they both became millionaires putting on an act.

Maddon is renowned for his antics—the petting zoo; medicine man; themed road trips; slogans on tee-shirts; and, most recently, a foray into art as motivation.  Veeck was renowned for using a midget to pinch hit; belly dancers; elephants; exploding scoreboard; and disco demolition.  You either love this kind of stuff, or you don’t; remember it fondly, or don’t.  The more I think about Veeck, the more I’m struck by a thoroughly decent man with a penchant to screw up a good thing.

In his first go-around as owner of the Sox, Veeck traded away a boatload of young talent after the 1959 pennant season (Earl Battey, Johnny Callison, Norm Cash, Don Mincher, John Romano).  If the White Sox teams I grew up with in the 1960s lacked hitting, that was because Veeck traded it away for older guys (Gene Freese, Minnie Minoso, Roy Sievers).  Veeck  played for now at the expense of later.

Ill health forced Veeck to sell the team in 1961 while circumstances allowed him to reacquire it in 1976.  Running the franchise on a relative shoestring, Veeck again started trading young talent, the likes of Bucky Dent, Brian Downing and Goose Gossage.  Things went better with this round of trades because Veeck worked in tandem with general manager Roland Hemond, who was a master at detecting undervalued talent in other organizations.  Still, Veeck couldn’t win consistently, and he sold the team a second after the 1980 season.  The White Sox then looked a little like the Rays when Maddon left following the 2014 season.

Maddon is cut from the same cloth as Veeck, with this one difference—he knows more about the game on the field than “Barnum Bill” ever did.  By that, do I mean a lot?  Maybe, maybe not.  I guess it depends on how you think Maddon managed in the 2016 World Series.