Maddon could borrow from ‘Seinfeld,’ have a season about nothing

It might be hard for Chicagoans to believe, but professional sports teams often won championships without the benefit of motivational slogans. As far as I know, the 1927 Yankees did not “Embrace the Target,’’ although Babe Ruth did do a lot of embracing when he wasn’t playing baseball.

Can you imagine a coach trying to tell Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics teams, “Don’t ever let the pressure exceed the pleasure,’’ as Cubs manager Joe Maddon has told his team via speech and T-shirt?

My favorite Bird quote is: “I like being by myself.’’ That, friends, is a slogan around which a team can rally. And now, behind one of the greatest players in history, a guy who just wants to be left alone, let’s go out there and kick some butt!

We fully expect Maddon to come up with a theme for this season because that’s what he does and because his team won the World Series with his “Embrace the Target’’ motto last year. He unveiled that one to Cubs players during spring training in 2016, and you can bet he’ll come up with another one when the team reports to Mesa, Ariz., this week. After all, why mess with success? I’d like to say “Don’t Mess With Success” could be the Cubs’ motto for 2017, but if I know one thing in life, it’s that the overly-hands-on Maddon will mess with something this season, for better or worse.

There is something very high-schoolish about a motivational slogan. A football coach thinks of one before the heat and humidity of two-a-days arrives and then slaps it on T-shirts to be worn underneath pads during practices and games. There’s a smelly togetherness to it. Does it help? In high school, sure. We’re talking about not yet developed brains with raging hormones as their guide. Before Friday night’s big game, show a high school football player a photo of the guy who stole his prom date, a girl who, by the way, totally looks like Kate Upton, and watch the needle move.

Do professional athletes pay attention to themes, mottoes and slogans? I don’t think so. If you gave them truth serum, most would likely say they pay attention to motivational gimmicks the way they pay attention to the tiny print on the tags on their shirts. This is especially true of baseball players. Baseball doesn’t lend itself to rah-rah speeches. Baseball is a long spring training, a 162-game regular season and, if a team is lucky, a long postseason. If you wanted a slogan that really captured the physical and mental demands of a baseball season, it would be, “Hope I Die Before I Get Old.’’ Because, by the time the season is over, you feel 92.

Maddon’s slogans are more like security blankets than adrenaline rushes, something for players to rely on when there is chaos or turmoil or a long hitting slump. The Cubs knew teams were going to be gunning for them last season. The year before, they had surprised everyone, including themselves, by winning 97 games and making it to the National League Championship Series. Maddon knew there would be a target on the team’s back in 2016, and he wanted his players to make peace with that. Also, he likes T-shirts.

His “Try Not to Suck’’ shirt was brilliant because it laughed at all those other serious slogans, and it sent a message of humor and relaxation to players as they headed onto the field: Have fun. Don’t sweat it. We’re in this together, enjoying ourselves. I’d call it a wink at all the corny T-shirts, but I’m not sure Maddon is the winking type. He believes in his slogans.

He has floated “uncomfortable’’ as this season’s buzzword, the idea being that good things often happen when we’re forced to adapt in ways in which we’re not familiar. But you could just as easily make an argument for the word “comfortable’’ as a theme – the Cubs are comfortable with who they are, comfortable in their own skin, comfortable with being hunted again. But comfortable too often is mistaken for its evil cousin, “complacent.’’ The next coach who sells complacency to his team will be the next fired coach.

There is another way to go, and lots of teams still do it. The players play. The manager or coach manages or coaches. And there are no themes. If a rallying cry worthy of a T-shirt comes up organically in the course of a season, wonderful. If not, wonderful too.

But as sure as the sun will shine in Arizona, Maddon will have shirts printed with mottoes and sayings before the first spring-training game arrives. He breathes in oxygen and exhales motivational slogans.

He’d really get people’s attention if he borrowed from a local band and made a statement with understatement: Plain White T’s.