Joe Maddon is on the road to his next baseball adventure

By Friday afternoon, Joe Maddon was behind the wheel of his recreational vehicle, 40 feet of rolling amenities he calls The Cousin Eddie, headed west.

He’d gotten a later start than he’d hoped. The day had gotten away some, what with the news he’d left the Tampa Bay Rays after nine years and all the clatter that followed. So he was only nearing Florida’s panhandle and was thinking he’d settle there for the weekend, watch Sunday’s football games from there, then start logging miles Monday morning. His daughter and grandchildren waited in Arizona, and after that home in California. There’d be a lot to think about in those miles.

It’d been a helluva thing, this turning Devil Rays into Rays, this turning a hardball organizational man into one of the great managers in the game. The choice to leave, to go find something else, to see what else fit his heart and head, had ridden him for more than a week.

“I’ve been agonizing,” he said as he drove. “I mean, sick. Literally, physically ill.”

General maager Andrew Friedman had gone off to Los Angeles, and that meant Maddon was allowed by contract to opt out of his final season with the Rays, which hadn’t ever been his plan. Things change. He called it "a unique moment I wanted to take advantage of.”

“I’ll sit back, try to find out what other people think and then try to make a good decision,” he said.

Maybe he’ll manage. Maybe he’ll consult.

“I would keep everything open,” he said. “I’m not going to say no to anything now.”

A catcher, he’d been undrafted out of Hazleton (Pa.) High School, then again out of Lafayette (Pa.) College. He’d played four years of minor-league ball. He’d not reached the major leagues, so never had a chance at this: virtual free agency. First, he’d have to leave the Rays, an organization he’d helped build into something presentable.

“It’s not easy, man,” he said. “It’s not easy.”

Already, speculation has him a perfect fit with the Chicago Cubs, whose young men would be expected to grow as players and human beings under the gentle, folksy and determined Maddon. But that is just speculation. Maddon said he doesn’t know what is ahead of him, beyond some of those blue highways.

“It’s kinda weird,” he said with a laugh.

He’d guided the Rays to their first six winning seasons and the 2008 World Series. He’d given them a personality, an on-field personality. More, an expectation for greatness. Sometimes they reached it, sometimes not. But the expectation did not change, and neither did Maddon. The culture had changed and rooted itself beside Maddon.

He is the second significant figure to leave the Rays this month. Friedman, their longtime general manager, became president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Oct. 14.

In spite of speculation that Maddon might follow Friedman to the Dodgers, that does not appear to be the case. Friedman insisted last week Don Mattingly, who is under contract through 2016, would be his manager in 2015.

Instead, as the Rays regrouped following Friedman’s departure and entered into contract extension talks with their manager, Maddon abruptly resigned. He was under contract through 2015, but could have opted out under certain circumstances, Friedman’s exit among them.

Contract talks broke down Thursday. By Friday, The Cousin Eddie was gassed up and ready.

Maddon, 60, was 754-705 in Tampa. In the eight years before Maddon arrived, which accounts for the short history of major league baseball in Tampa, the Devil Rays and then the Rays had finished out of last place once. Maddon replaced Lou Piniella in 2006 and by 2008 the club, newly recast as the Rays, won 97 games, an AL East title and the AL pennant. The Rays advanced to the playoffs three times in the next five years, as well.

Much of the success is attributable to Maddon, bright and personable, familiar with the game’s advanced metrics and yet able to relate to today’s player. In this free agency, he’d likely have his pick of jobs, should that come now or next season, as teams re-evaluate their managers and directions.

“We tried diligently and aggressively to sign Joe to a third contract extension prior to this decision,” Rays owner Stu Sternberg said in a statement. “As of yesterday afternoon, Joe enabled himself to explore other opportunities throughout Major League Baseball. He will not be managing the Rays in 2015.”

Sternberg added, “The foundation of success laid during [Maddon’s] tenure endures.”

That is, perhaps, what Maddon – and Friedman before him – leaves behind. And it won’t fade quickly, not for Maddon, for one thing because The Cousin Eddie has some massive side-view mirrors. Over a short conversation, he’d sounded good, sounded hopeful, sounded enthused for what comes next, whether that be a job on the top step or a rest stop on the way.

“Yeah, something,” Maddon said. “Somewhere, somehow, doing something.”

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