ST. LOUIS – Are Cub fans worried? They should be, Cubs manager Joe Maddon said.
But that doesn’t mean he is, or that his team is, or that the Cubs won’t beat the Cardinals in this series, he said.
“The fans should always worry,” said Maddon before the Cubs took the field Saturday trying to bounce back after the Cardinals beat them 4-0 in Friday night’s opener of the best-of-five division series.
“It’s always the prerogative of a fan to worry. I absolutely believe that,” he said. “That’s what barrooms are for. That’s what little forums are for online in this 21st century stuff. The fans should always worry. Go ahead and worry as much as you like.
“But from our perspective, we have to just go out there and play the game like we always do. I’m here to tell you man, I just can’t live that way.”
Maddon seemed his typical upbeat self the day after John Lackey shut down his club, blasting some classic 1970s Emerson Lake and Palmer power tunes for beat writers in his office before the game – showing off the quality and power of his Brookstone speaker system.
“I don’t vibrate on that frequency,” he said about the worry thing. “The process is fearless. If you want to always live your life just based on the outcome, you’re going to be fearful a lot. And when you’re doing that, you’re really not living in a particular moment.
“I’m 60; I’ll be 80. And by the time I’m 80, 20 years from now, if I’ve just been worried about outcomes I’m going to miss a lot.”
The Cubs won 97 games this season, including their last eight straight to finish the season – then made it nine with Jake Arrieta’s shutout of Pittsburgh in the wild-card game.
One loss in a playoff series opener on the road against the perennial October monsters of the Midwest? Intimidating? Can a young team starting doubting all that we-can-win-here mojo they built with that series win in September?
“We’ll find out, but I don’t anticipate that,” Maddon said.
Mostly because the process and the expectation aren’t built around the results, he said.
“I’ve not even mentioned winning one time to these guys during this whole time,” Maddon said. “If you take care of the seconds, the minutes, the hours in a day take care of themselves.
“So for our fans back home, please go ahead and be worried. That’s OK. But understand that from our perspective in the clubhouse, we’re more worried about the process than the outcome.”
