Take Me Out > Time To Get Your Crazy So-Much-Fun On

Yep folks it's almost that time again! Excited already?
How many days to Pre-Season Spring Training for the Chicago Cubbies here in Mesa?
Joe Maddon and the 2018 Cubs: Manager’s people skills will be tested from Day 1

Steve Greenberg@SLGreenberg 

(Opening Image credit: Cubs manager Joe Maddon on a festive "Thanksmas" night. (Photo by Madeline Kenney/Chicago Sun-Times)
Let the fun begin again - here's the start for this play-ball season 2018 with some snippets from The Chicago Sun Times. . . and please take a look farther on in this post about how the local mad mainstream media got its game-on last year stating that Mesa will be at "the center of the baseball universe."

Blogger Note: The Chicago Cubs 16-week pre-season training is a revenue booster for the City of Mesa. It's Christmas-in-July, according to City Manager Chris Brady, for sales/use tax revenues who spear-headed a campaign to get taxpayers to underwrite a mega-million bond issue to build a sports complex renamed Sloan Park for billionaire Repub Chicago Cubs B-Ball franchise owner Ricketts

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"Close your eyes, if it helps, and try to imagine the sight of 63-year-old Joseph John Maddon Jr. driving the highways of Arizona next month, holding steady at 85 miles per hour but every now and then pumping his slick new ride — you only live once, baby — up to 90. . .

Rock-and-roll on the stereo. A breeze steaming in through rolled-down windows and mussing the Cubs manager’s gently dyed hair. Maddon is Mr. Cool. Mr. Excitement. Just wait until his players get a load of him behind the wheel of his — are you ready for this? — 1985 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon.
Dear God, it’s true. . . If that won’t rally the troops after a grind of a 2017 season in which they reached the NLCS for the third straight time but seemingly nearly died trying, what will?
And yet rally them, Maddon must, because the Cubs were a soggy blanket last year compared with the eternal flame that was — is — the World Series-winning squad of 2016.
“I don’t know that we had enough fun,” Maddon said Wednesday . . .
WHAT'S HE TALKIN' ABOUT?

Maddon is talking about “energy and enthusiasm,” too, words he paired often enough Wednesday that it’s obvious they’ll be at the core of the message he preaches from Day 1 of spring training on through to what everyone hopes will be a fourth straight October run. “Energy and enthusiasm” doesn’t have much of a ring to it, but Maddon, ever the shticky sloganeer, will come up with a better way to put it.
(For my money, the bar was set with “try not to suck.”)
“I’m not ready to reveal it,” he said. “But it’s going to be kind of fun, I think.”

And there we are on the F-word again: fun. Did the Cubs ever seem to be having it last season? . . . And there was a disconnect, at least compared with the seasons before, between Maddon and some players.

More than once, for example, they vetoed his calls for dress-up themes on road trips...
Can he reach his players as effectively as he did before? All he can to is put the pedal to the metal and try."

Follow reporter Steve Greenberg  on Twitter @slgreenberg.
Email: sgreenberg@suntimes.com
READ MORE > https://chicago.suntimes.com
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How Mesa is capturing the Chicago Cubs' magic this year: 7 in 2017

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/.../chicago-cubs...mesa/95663988/

Jan 18, 2017 - Let me repeat that: The Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Sure, it took 108 years, but our lovable Cubbies are now World Champions. Enter the city of Mesa. Starting Feb. 25 (OK, technically pitchers and catchers report in mid-February), we will be at the center of the baseball universe when we host one ...