Cubs’ Joe Maddon looks, sounds like a guy who knows what’s coming — and will be just fine

ST. LOUIS — The most talked-about manager in baseball — for all the wrong reasons — walked down the steps into the visitors’ dugout Friday at Busch Stadium.

With a smile on his face and buoyancy in his voice, he regarded the far-larger-than-usual horde of reporters waiting for him — practically enough to fill an expanded September roster. A really, truly, comically terrible one.

They weren’t here to talk about the Cardinals’ attempt to close out an NL Central title.

They were here to close the book on the Cubs. More specifically, to close the book on Joe Maddon.

“We got enough dugout for this?” Maddon said.

Again, that smile. It stayed right there as Maddon answered one question after another that implied his dismissal from the Cubs was imminent and inevitable.

“Listen, I’m not conceding anything right now,” he said.

But he had the look and the sound of a man who knows the score.

And the look and the sound of a man who’s ready for what’s coming.

You want to fire Joe Maddon? Go ahead. Do your worst. Just don’t expect it to rock his world.

“Right now, you know what I’m excited about?” he said. “I’m going to get in that car and drive to our pad in Hazleton [Pennsylvania].”

To his and wife Jaye’s charming, handsome house on a golf course that they’ve had scarcely a chance to live in. To his mother, his sister and all those cousins and friends still in the stomping grounds where he was raised.

And into a future full of promise for a 65-year-old no one expects will be unemployed for long.

“What’s better than that?” Maddon said. “You get to sit there and reflect and try to plot, plan whatever the heck’s going to be around the bend.”

Maddon spoke Friday with a close friend whose wife has cancer. He thought about an uncle who recently died. He thought about how much he missed his grandkids in Arizona.

Someone wanted to know if he was feeling down about his Cubs fate.

“Why would you permit a game to drag you down like that?” he said. “I feel really good about the future, very strong about the future, whether it’s on or off the baseball field. So why would you permit moments to drag you down like that? It’s been wonderful. Wonderful.”

It’s Maddon. A perfect manager? Not even close. Quick to acknowledge his mistakes? Heck, no. Cocky? Sure, in his own way.

In his 11^th hour, though, he has more than earned the floor.

“Honestly, I’d tell you straight up if I thought I should’ve done something different. I promise you, I would,” he said. “But I don’t. And that’s not being egotistical by any means.”

A World Series title. Four straight years in the postseason.

“And don’t forget three NLCS’s in a row,” he said. “Just a couple knocks away from three World Series in a row. People want to focus on thoughts? Focus on that one. Everybody tends to focus on negativity. I don’t.”

A couple knocks away from three straight World Series? Those must be some epic knocks Maddon is imagining. Weren’t the Cubs swept by the Mets in 2015? Didn’t they fall in five games to the Dodgers in 2017?

But let’s not nitpick now. We can do that later.

Or never.

“Three trips to the [NLCS]?” he went on. “If you had been guaranteed that in ’14, going into ’15, when we walked in the door, how would you feel about that? As a fan of the Cubs, how would you feel about that? And how would you feel about last year as a Cubs fan?

“The mind once stretched has a difficult time going back to its original form. We’ve stretched the minds a little bit.”

One by one, Maddon’s players are coming to him these days. The time to talk is running out.

“They see,” he said. “They read.”

They know.

“I’ve had some really interesting and insightful and in-depth conversations with some guys, and it’s been awesome,” he said. “It’s been absolutely awesome.”