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Thursday, August 10, 2023

Book Review-The Book of Joe By Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci

Sports memoirs fall into many general categories, this one however, tries to fit into too many categories at once. As I read the book, there are times when it feels like it is trying too much, and then there are times when it hits the right spot at the right time. I don’t know whether to ascribe the success of the book to holding my attention to Joe Maddon’s story or to Tom Verducci’s writing and organization. Regardless, I enjoyed the book.

Joe Maddon became famous first as the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, a miracle worker who stopped the downward spiral of the team’s fortunes using his own unique philosophy. He reached the pinnacle of a major league manager when he managed the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series, the first and only one in 108 years. But he was unceremoniously replaced a few years later because he would not submit to front office interference. He returned to his roots, the California Angels, as manager, but he lasted only a few more seasons as the landscape of baseball managing changed completely. It is a stunning lesson in how quickly the center of gravity in professional sports management shifts and renders the celebrated expendable.

The Book of Joe tries to be a memoir first, it provides reminiscences of the meaningful factors in Joe Maddon’s life; it is also organized in chapters that are titled with the Maddonisms, those familiar sayings that made Maddon famous, which are then structured into a business how-to book; finally, it tries to be a reportage of how the Moneyball mindset, which had pervaded major league sports, has gone so far in the other direction, thereby cheating us of the essential elements of the reasons why we love sports. The last point is the slow developing theme that becomes the focus showing us the reason why Joe Maddon is no longer managing in the MLB. The book makes it clear that this situation is the epitome of irony since Maddon was one of the very first rebels who used and relied on statistical analysis for his decision making. The accounts of why and where he tends to rely on statistics is interesting to me, as I have my own opinions about the usage of statistics. I am not a luddite to the ways of statistical data, but as an engineer who has had to use statistical process control and the six sigma methods, I know where the limitations are when applying statistics to endeavors which are intimately coupled with human decisions, such as sports.

The threefold intent of the book is something that is very difficult to pull off. While I felt that the stories of Joe Maddon’s upbringing and his experiences within baseball were interesting, I also felt that some of the stories seemed forced because the authors were trying to wedge the stories into the other two intentions: as lessons and as means of explaining why he acted and reacted to the quant dominated front office regimes. I will admit that I was most interested in getting into Maddon’s head and trying to determine the magic of his managing successes. The book showed a significant part of the behind the curtains aspects of his decision making. I also appreciated Maddon’s loyalty to those who had shaped his insights and his instincts as a manager. He delved into the personas who had influenced his growth as a manager; most importantly, he was clear in giving us the reason’s why they had such influence over his experiences and how he uses those lessons on a daily basis in his managerial life.

It is his statement of his philosophy through the chapter titles that captured my interest the most. His ideas, while not entirely original, have been presented in a cogent and matter of fact manner; indeed, I have been inspired to write some articles on Maddon’s themes.

Not all the chapters are gems, but they are interesting enough to  keep me interested as I learned new ideas as well as being reminded of what I had known previously; that was worth the price of the book.

The underlying theme throughout the book is an interesting discussion of the reality in sports. Ever since the publication of Michael Lewis Money Ball ;  coaches and managers, both professional and amateur, have been inspired to change the way they coach and manage, often  with an urgency to use statistics to improve their decisions; those old guard who based their decision making on intuitions and gut feel have been displaced by quants or stat heads, the resulting revolution has swung the pendulum completely to the other end of the spectrum, where humanity and experiences has been relegated to the scrap heap and all the decision makers are drinking the Moneyball kool-aid. Indeed, there is nothing more dogmatic and inflexible as someone who was at one time on the outside, someone who was an innovator and had original ideas. So it is that all humanity and experience have been denigrated to the point of extinction in coaching and managing.

Maddon and Verducci use Maddon’s story to illustrate that point. Whereas Maddon was an early adopter and innovator in using statistics, the expanded front office of today have decided to justify the expenses of their own existence. Coaching and managing has become a top-down exercise in ego for the general manager. The crux of the problem is that statistics do not capture human nature nor the uncertainties that are a large essential part of sports. The  reliance on just statistics to make decisions is as foolhardy and deceptive,  as much as just using gut feels and intuitions.

As Dr. Edward Deming, one of the foremost proponents of statistics in manufacturing stated in point 11 of his 14 points for Total Quality Management: Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management. (American Society of Quality-Deming's 14 Points 2023) Management needs to understand that players are not cattle, and each individual player responds differently from someone else. This is the artistry of coaching and managing, being able to understand the players and the games artfully. Maddon’s story of how the front office dictated his choices in using the pitchers and bullpen sound staggeringly and sadly like managing by quota that is practiced in the global industry. I gained quite a bit of insight from this book, as I am a coach, I read the book with the intention of juxtaposing my own coaching experiences with how Maddon managed the various baseball teams in his career, this practice made me think about the dynamics of decision making that is involved in coaching and the pitfalls of putting my thought process on auto pilot or disengaging my own ability to think critically and feeling comfortable in a rut. The best recommendation I can make about The Book of Joe is that I will continually be consulting with the lessons from the book for a long time. This is saying quite a bit about a former Cubs manager for someone who is a Cardinals fan.

References

American Society of Quality-Deming's 14 Points. 2023. https://asq.org/quality-resources/total-quality-management/deming-points (accessed August 10, 2023).

 

 

 

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