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Maddon Goes For The Cycle

Tribune photo by CLIFF McBRIDE

Joe Maddon loved playing football and baseball, but cycling is his real sporting passion.

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By MARY SHEDDEN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 1, 2009

Growing up, Joe Maddon was all about team sports.

He loved playing football and baseball so much, it evolved into a 28-year career coaching and managing baseball teams, including the top job with the defending American League Champions, the Tampa Bay Rays.

But ask Maddon about the sport that gets him going personally, and he'll immediately switch gears. Cycling — an individual sport free of bats and gloves, and far away from a baseball diamond — is his real passion.

Maddon began riding in 2000, while he was coaching for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He needed a fitness outlet that didn't hurt his legs the way running did. A heavy, $200 Giant mountain bike with knobby tires was the solution. Besides, Maddon says, it looked cool.

"The first time I go out on it, I go like 15 minutes, and I think I'm doing great. I just kept pushing and pushing, and found that you can actually go a pretty good distance," says Maddon, 55.

But he also realized he had a lot to learn.

"Eventually, I found the knobby tires weren't really cool. So then I got the smoother tires and I thought, "Wow this is even easier now. So I just kept going and going, and I felt a general overall feeling of better health. So I was hooked."

Cycling helps Maddon feel better physically, but he says its greatest value comes from how hitting the road affects him mentally. "The whole time you've got a chance to think, and think and think," he says.

Rays fans have witnessed first-hand what Maddon calls the "residue of a bike ride." Last year's motivating "9=8" slogan was developed on a ride, as was the 2009 motto "09>08."

"That's a real creative moment, when you're on a bike, and you're free, and things just pop in and out," he says.

Cycling isn't an occasional fitness outlet for Maddon. He sees it as part of his regular routine. Cycling brings the mental clarity needed to manage elite athletes and a high-pressure job that is analyzed every night by fans and the national sports media.

During the baseball season, Maddon tries to squeeze in a 40-minute or hour-long session before heading to the ballpark. That includes when he's on the road. (See accompanying story.)

And yes, he dons all the cycling gear: helmet, bike shirt and shorts, and clip-on shoes he says take time (and a couple of falls) to master. He dismisses anyone who worries about what he calls a "freaky outfit."

"So what? If it makes you feel better, who cares?"

Maddon, who played for three seasons in baseball's minor leagues before switching to coaching, mixes up his regular cycling workout with strength training: free weights, pull-ups and pushups. Offseason, when he's at his California home, he tries to work out four to five times a week.

Cycling along the scenic Pacific beaches near Anaheim spoiled him in terms of scenery, he says. Here in the Tampa Bay area, he favors Tampa's Bayshore Boulevard, Davis Islands and the Pinellas Trail.

Maddon says during last year's playoffs, the Rays would win the home series when he saw dolphins in the water as he rode along Bayshore Boulevard.

"I did not see them prior to playing the Phillies," he says of the games against the World Series champions. "So the dolphins kind of let me down."

Many U.S. cities, including Tampa, are not extremely rider-friendly, Maddon says. That doesn't have to be the case here, where there already are wide streets and great weather to attract cyclists.

"This area has got it. All the infrastructure is in place," he says. "We just have to think it's important."

He's not the fastest rider — a humbling realization for a man who led his team to the World Series last year. And he rarely has company on his rides, though he has introduced a few members of the Rays staff to cycling.

But who knows, Maddon says. Maybe he'll be a trendsetter, like when he started using computers to track his players' progress back in the early 1980s.

"When I started using computers, people thought I was weird and a geek. Check 'em all out now; they all have them," he says.

"So one of these days, everybody's going to be riding a bike, too."

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