Joe Maddon and the Chicago Cubs really got to know each other at an RV park at Narvarre, Fla., near Pensacola, behind a motor home named after a vehicle from the “Vacation” movies.
This is how one of the biggest deals for a manager in Major League Baseball history got done.
Maddon, who was introduced as the 54th manager in club history Monday afternoon at a bar across the street from Wrigley Field, said his job interview for the Cubs happened, “behind the ‘Cousin Eddie’ — that’s our R.V., the ‘Cousin Eddie,’ a 43-foot Winnebago.”
Maddon explained that he and his wife, Jaye, were on a cross-country trip from the Tampa area to California when the Cubs called and they wanted to talk to him about becoming their manager. Maddon said he knew team president Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer from a job interview he had with the Boston Red Sox in 2003, when the organization hired Terry Francona instead. The meeting at the RV park verified what Maddon figured he knew.
“We sat back there and pretty much just talked philosophy, how this all was going to work,” Maddon said. “For me, that was the most important thing. That’s what I needed to know, that we were philosophically aligned. It had nothing to do with anything other than that.”
As a result, Maddon reportedly has signed a five year, $25 million deal with the Cubs— one of the longer and richer deals ever for a manager, though the 10-year-contract Mike Scioscia signed with the Los Angeles in 2009 also is the richest.
Did Cousin Eddie himself ever pull of a bigger deal in that RV? Unlikely.
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David Brown is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter!
