(image swiped from Sportress of Blogitude)
“I have a sign in my clubhouse that says, ‘Integrity has no need of rules,'” boasts Tampa manager Joe Maddon (above) to WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford. “These guys are grown-ups and why would I attempt to regulate their behavior?” Well, maybe because you don’t have Josh Beckett on your team? Though Maddon has little to say on the subject of fried chicken and Xbox 360, he takes a very dim view of Joe Torre considering an MLB-wide ban on beer in team clubhouses.
“I’m not into knee-jerk reactions,” Maddon told WEEI.com. “If somebody had all of these wonderful thoughts prior to this happening I may be more on board with it, or more empathetic to it. But all of this knee-jerk stuff that occurs in our game absolutely drives me crazy. If you want to be proactive about some thoughts, go ahead, be proactive and I’m all for that. But to say a grown-up can’t have a beer after a game? Give me a break. That is, I’m going to use the word, ‘asinine,’ because it is. Let’s bring the Volstead Act back, OK. Let’s go right back to prohibition and start legislating everything all over again. All that stuff pretty much annoys me, as you can tell.”
Maddon, whose team is one of 13 in Major League Baseball to allow beer in the clubhouse, said that players at the big league level should be allowed to regulate themselves in regard to such activities as the use of beer in the clubhouse.
“I don’t understand any of that. Do we sell beer in the ballpark? These people who attend the games have a much greater chance of becoming drunk by the time they leave than a baseball player does,” he said. “Most of the time if you have a beer after the game, it’s one, maybe two, and that’s it. I have a glass of wine. I defend there’s not a thing wrong with that. If they want to start pulling beers out of clubhouses they better start pulling them out of ballparks, too, because that’s a higher percentage chance of something going awry.”