Joe Maddon

And the best way to do that is just communication.

communication and listening and don't dictate one of the things that I think one of our strong points here is that we provide a lot of freedom for our players to work with and when you do that I think you get more respect and discipline in return so all those things are factors but everybody's got a little bit of a game plan here and for example a guy like you know you don't want to wait till spring training to try to put that game plan in action you got to start way before that.

I've done it twice, I think, in the last, or maybe three times in the last year and a half.

Again, I won't be specific, but with one player, I really thought I overreacted and I said something I shouldn't have.

and the next day I called him in and said, you know what, I stand by being upset about what I was upset about, but the way I handled it was inappropriate and wrong, and it's totally counter to what I believe in and what we do here.

So I definitely made sure that the player knew that, but nobody else did.

I mean, nobody else has to know about that.

air your laundry out, whether it's publicly in a paper or you want to be confrontational in front of a group, that's not going to get it done.

It's praised publicly and criticized privately.

When you do that, you can get everybody on the same page.

Favorite one's difficult.

I mean, last year it was motivated by my granddaughter, Tyler, in Arizona.

Then it turned into the Ken Rosenthal Nerd Road Trip.

And then we combined that with the Honey Jones with the bow ties.

That one was pretty good because the guys really did get into that.

And it was kind of fun.

It's always fun walking into the Boston Hotel dressed up like a bunch of nerds and having people react the way they did.

So that's among my favorites.

The Grunge Trip, too, was pretty solid to Seattle.

Why do I do it?