He Left a Benchmark With Angels

Joe Maddon was in Tim Salmon’s living room the day the Angels made their first contract offer to the outfielder in 1989, he helped guide Salmon through the minor leagues as the organization’s roving hitting instructor and was an Angel coach for all but one of Salmon’s 13 big league seasons in Anaheim.

But when Salmon joins Angel pitchers and catchers for their first spring training workout today, Maddon will be in St. Petersburg, Fla., beginning his first camp as the Tampa Bay Devil Ray manager, while the Angels begin the task of filling the sizable void Maddon left in his wake.

It will be strange for Salmon, walking into the Tempe Diablo Stadium clubhouse and not seeing the middle-aged but youthful looking bench coach with the funky Elvis Costello-like glasses, the quick, effortless smile and the keen baseball sense forged from 28 years in the game.

It will be weird seeing a practice schedule that does not require a PhD to decipher and does not include a “quote of the day,” the thought-provoking, funny and sometimes profound gems Maddon would dig out and post on schedules and lineup cards every day, from the beginning of spring training through the end of the season.

But it’s not as if Salmon and the rest of the Angels will arrive in camp, process Maddon’s departure the first day and move on. Maddon’s loss will be felt in many ways, for many weeks, the Angels’ appreciation for their former comrade probably growing in his absence.

“I think people will miss him more than they think,” Salmon said of Maddon, who spent the last 10 years as the Angel bench coach. “We relied a lot on his organizational skills, and he was a great sounding board for every move Mike [Scioscia, Angel manager] wanted to make.

“They’d run scenarios back and forth, and Joe didn’t say yes to whatever the manager said. He’d say no, and this is why I think so. There was a relationship built on trust, and to reestablish that with [new bench coach] Ron Roenicke ... I don’t know ... not that it can’t be done, but they’ll have to feel each other out.

“From Ron’s standpoint, it’s, ‘What can I say? When can I say it? What can’t I say?’ That will take some getting used to. Joe understood the game, he was a master of stealing signs, and he could see situations that were coming way in advance, like a manager would. And the best thing, from a player standpoint, is Joe was a confidante; you could go to him and get a straight answer.”

Roenicke admits that if he were coming from another organization, he’d be “very uncomfortable” trying to replace Maddon, but spending six years as the Angel third base coach, overseeing outfield play and baserunning and building his own relationships with players should ease the transition.

Still, it won’t be easy.

“To be honest, there’s no way I’m going to replace Joe, and that’s not to mean I can’t do as good of a job as bench coach,” Roenicke said. “But I can’t replace him because there’s a personality he had, and relationships he had with players, some going back to minor leagues, that I don’t have.”

Roenicke has been in the game as a player, a big league coach and minor league manager for almost three decades and is confident he has the baseball knowledge required for the position. Replacing Maddon’s people skills might be the toughest challenge.

Maddon was the primary buffer between Scioscia and the players, bringing player concerns to the manager and manager concerns to the players. Roenicke has done that primarily with the outfielders; now he’ll have to do it with the whole team.

“I think I can make suggestions to Mike during the game, and Dino [Ebel, new third base coach] and I can organize things so they’ll run fine,” Roenicke said. “But the part where I need help is, ‘Joe, can I approach a player on this? What do you think?’ That part is so important to the outcome of what happens to players.

“If I want to talk to Garret [Anderson] about this, how do I need to approach it? Because you can’t approach everyone the same way.”

Said Salmon: “Joe is very astute, very smart, and almost eccentric -- he’s interested in philosophy, politics, and he’d talk about other things in the world besides baseball. He was a calming force. You never saw him frustrated or mad. He’d always be even-keeled, calm, easygoing.”

Roenicke knows there will be a learning curve to his new job, and he has already shown a willingness to be accommodating. He’s not planning to place a quote of the day on today’s practice schedule, “but if guys really want it, I’ll try to come up with something,” he said.

“Just don’t knock my vocabulary; I’m not smart enough.”