Major League Baseball’s Joe Maddon opted out of his contract as manager of the Tampa Bay Rays. He’s been with the team for nine seasons (754-705) and led the Rays to the playoffs four times. Sportswriters including Will Leitch at SportsOnEarth are having fun speculating which teams would best suit Maddon. The LA Dodgers have made it clear that Don Mattingly is staying on as manager. So the major contenders are the Los Angeles Angels, Minnesota Twins, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, and – last but not least – St. Louis Cardinals.
Cardinals fans would love to have Maddon and not just due to his talent and experience but because Maddon grew up as a diehard Cardinals fan. The 60-year-old grew up in Hazleton, Pennsylvania but he spent most of his childhood summers listening to Cardinals games on his transistor radio. He even took to drawing the Cardinals logo on all of his notebooks! “They [the games when the Cardinals were on the Saturday game of the week] made all those summer months really fun,” Maddon said. “It impacted my life.”
