Chicago Cubs: Joe Maddon wishes more players had Buds with buds

After a season in which the Chicago Cubs played dreadfully on the road, skipper Joe Maddon quipped that perhaps the culprit was a lack of beer and social engagement before and after games.

Beer and baseball go together like lamb and tuna fish. Or maybe spaghetti and meatballs if you prefer. If you’re at the game or watching from home, chances are you’re cracking open a cold one. For Chicago Cubs fans, It might be an Old Style or a Bud, or it could be the latest from Goose Island or Dogfish Head.

Funny thing is, it’s not just fans who enjoy their brewskies – players have always been tied to frothy beverages just as much as they have to throwing bbs or hitting bombs. Whether it’s Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, or the infamous rally beers from Jon Lester, John Lackey and Josh Beckett in the 2011 Boston Red Sox clubhouse (pssst- they won a ring two years following that fiasco).

At the beginning of the 2019 season, one of the points of emphasis on the now pointless-in-hindsight manifesto agreed upon by Cubs players, coaches, and front office personnel had to do with beer consumption  (I even wrote a story about it).

Fast food and beer is hard to stay away from when you’re on the road and you’re with your buddies.  Apparently though, for the 2019 Iteration of the Cubs, that’s not necessarily true. And, while it would seem to be an affront to the bogus didnt-work-manifesto, lame duck skipper Joe Maddon recently intimated that some of the road issues this year might be the lack of camaraderie over cold ones.