Joe Maddon’s biggest challenge is keeping everyone happy

Cubs manager Joe Maddon admits he has more roster depth in every area than he’s ever had before, and getting them all work will be a difficult task.

“The challenge would be to keep them all happy,” Maddon said Tuesday at Sloan Park. “But I think you’ve noticed already they have put their ego in their back pocket. Everybody is here to win. And I think you’re going to see guys even when they’re not playing be fine with it.”

Maddon said he wrote a long paper while he was in the Angels organization in the late 1980s about “creating the right culture” to get and keep players in the organization regardless of how much money they could get elsewhere. Now he’s seeing that play out with the Cubs.

“So whenever I see guys signing for less and wanting to stay here, I think about whatever that was I wrote,” he said. “I’d love to find it.”

Maddon said he gave the paper to his Angels boss, Bill Bavasi, and doesn’t know where it is now. This was obviously in the days before personal computers.

“It might have been on my Panasonic word processor, which I had prior to my computer,” he said.

Maddon also wrote a 130-140 page book on hitting that he never got around to publishing.

“That’s been in the can for a long time,” he said. “I banged it out in a hotel in Obregon (Mexico) … It was great. I really used to like to sit around late at night and try to put what I thought down on a piece of paper. I really thought I became a better coach by doing that.

“Those were the kind of things, I don’t know if it happen very often any more, but those are the things that really helped me understand my craft.”

Did he ever try and get it published?

“I gave it to couple guys to read,” he said. “You’re always freaked out about stuff like that. I got this one dude that was very good and critical, in a good way, which I like. And also some of my thoughts on hitting have probably changed since then. I’d have to go through it again to really be comfortable with what I’m saying.”