When 76-year-old Tony La Russa agreed last fall to manage the Chicago White Sox after nine years away from the dugout, Joe Maddon called his agent, Alan Nero.
“I’m good for 10 more years,'” the Los Angeles Angels manager said he told Nero. “I felt it added 10 more years of shelf life to me immediately. My goal has always been to work as long as Mick Jagger wanted to be on stage, and Tony just validated all of that.”
That would leave Maddon still managing at age 77, when Generation Z players will have replaced most of the millennials, with Generation Alpha about to come up from the minors.
Whether robot umpires and pitchers throwing 110 mph will be the norm in 2031 is anyone’s guess. The only certainty is managers still will be running the game, getting criticized when things go wrong and reaping the rewards when everything falls into place.
Maddon and La Russa know that all too well.
The veteran managers have been at the top of the heap, A-No. 1, kings of their respective hills.
La Russa ranks second on the all-time managerial wins list and has three World Series titles, four Manager of the Year awards and a plaque in the Hall of Fame. Maddon has eight playoff appearances, three Manager of the Year awards and two World Series appearances, including the Chicago Cubs’ 2016 championship.
Yet both have been fired by management on the North and South sides, criticized by fans for overmanaging and accused of being out of touch with the younger generation of players.
It’s an occupational hazard for most managers but particularly for those who work past age 60.
Three years ago Maddon was under fire for the Cubs’ failures in 2018, when they lost a division tiebreaker game to the Milwaukee Brewers and the National League wild-card game to the Colorado Rockies. Cubs President Theo Epstein said after that season that some players weren’t thrilled with the communication about their spot in the batting order and told Maddon to adjust his style to deal with the “ultramillennials” in the clubhouse.
Maddon complied and even read a book called “Managing Millennials for Dummies,” which provided lessons on how to “fight millennial fatigue,” “eliminate generational biases” and “gain generational awareness.”
Newly woke about his unconscious biases concerning millennial players’ needs, Maddon set out to adjust to the differences between millennials and the Gen X players he started with in 2006 with the Tampa Bay Rays. He called the plan “very groovy” in spring training and entered the 2019 season with a laundry list of new ideas, including telling players three days in advance when they would be in the lineup.
Alas, the book didn’t provide any answers on what to do when your closer — Craig Kimbrel in this instance — is suffering through an abysmal stretch in late September. The Cubs lost nine straight to fall out of the race, and Maddon was let go by Epstein, who resigned one year later.
Now the Cubs are in dire straits, the core has been traded and Maddon can’t be blamed.
So what lesson did Maddon learn from the great millennial-adjustment experiment of 2019?
“It really comes down to one thing, at any age — either you are good with other people or you’re not,” he said Tuesday on a Zoom call before the White Sox-Angels series. “Either you have the ability to connect or you don’t.
“I know there is a lot that’s been made about (dealing with millennials), and I read and I understand. But my dad’s generation thought my generation was soft. My generation thought the next generation was soft. That’s just the way this thing works. If you want to be communicative with them, get down to the root of what makes someone tick, what interests them and how you can communicate. You can do it from 70 to 20 or from 20 to 70. It doesn’t matter.”
Maddon maintains it’s all about listening, pointing to his 19-year-old granddaughter, Tyler, who often calls him for advice instead of her teenage peers. The need to remember what it was like to be young also is essential.
“Don’t forget what it felt like to be that age … to be confused,” he said. “And don’t forget what it felt like to feel like the world is collapsing around you. If you forget all that and want to institute your belief system upon them independent of theirs and think you have all the answers, you’re going to be wrong almost all the time.
“I’ve done the reading. You can read all the books you want on Gen Z, the millennials, but unless you want to take the time and communicate and get on the same level, you won’t. I could be equally unable to communicate with baby boomers if I chose to be ineffective at communicating. A guy like Tony, he’s very aware of all the adjustments he had to make, and to me, he’s a great listener.”
La Russa came to the Sox under fire. His hiring was controversial because of his close relationship with Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. The fact he had been out of the game since the end of 2011 was as worrisome to some as his advancing age.
How could he handle a team as young and fun-loving as the Sox? La Russa told his players in spring training he would have to earn their trust. In spite of a few hiccups, including the Yermín Mercedes saga, he has done just that. La Russa listens whenever Tim Anderson, José Abreu or Lance Lynn talks and basically cedes the clubhouse policing to the players.
Closer Liam Hendriks admitted in early July that the Sox “have some loud personalities, some different opinions and a lot of people” in that clubhouse and said if the shoe fits, wear it.
“The cockiness in the dugout, in the media a little bit, we thrive off the negative energy,” Hendriks said, calling it “our edge.”
If the belt fits, toss it.
La Russa’s job is to make sure his team maintains that edge in the postseason.
Former Sox manager Rick Renteria could’ve won the AL Central this season, most fans would concede. But La Russa was brought in to take the Sox from Point B — getting into the playoffs — to Point C — winning it all. October will define his 2021 season.
Maddon called La Russa his “Don Zimmer,” referring to the longtime baseball man who served as a special adviser with the Rays during Maddon’s time in Tampa. Zimmer would sit in Maddon’s office after games and talk about his strategy.
“And if he disagreed with anything, he would tell me very abruptly and quickly too,” Maddon said in 2015.
La Russa and Maddon had similar conversations last year when La Russa worked with the Angels, and some of those came up in their pregame talk Tuesday at Sox Park, sparking a comparison from Maddon of two diverse baseball personalities who spent a lifetime in the game.
“With Zim, it included Coney Island hot dogs,” Maddon said of their talks. “With Tony, because of the pandemic, he wasn’t able to bring me food. But we enjoyed it, and a lot of it was validation of my own thoughts, which I totally appreciated.”
In truth, Maddon probably won’t be managing until age 77, no matter how long the Rolling Stones keep performing. He has a lot of traveling left and grandkids to spoil.
But he’s glad La Russa is showing everyone an old man still can succeed in a young man’s game.
“He’s proving that mind is very sharp,” Maddon said. “That man cares as much as anybody I’ve ever been around, and he carries defeat a lot more strongly than he does victory.
“That’s just the way he’s wired — in a good way.”
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