Cubs had little choice but to act swiftly, coldly in pursuit of their ray of hope

Since the day he walked away from the Tampa Bay Rays, Joe Maddon appeared to fit best with the Chicago Cubs, the young team in need of direction and a sturdier future. Instability, after all, has been a tradition for the Cubs. For proof, look no further than the imminent hiring of, you know, Joe Maddon.

In November 2011, Theo Epstein jumped to the Cubs from the Boston Red Sox. Since then, the Cubs have played three baseball seasons and Epstein has hired three managers. He’s fired, so far, two of them.

Dale Sveum, hired and fired. Rick Renteria, hired and, presumably, fired, and at best reassigned. Lord help Maddon if Earl Weaver becomes available.

The net result has been three fifth-place finishes, which, anymore, means last place.

But, hey, this is the plan, and nobody doesn’t love the pretty prospects Epstein is stockpiling, and nobody doesn’t love the hiring of Maddon fundamentally, no matter how ruthless and cold-hearted it might look. Maddon is the best there is at this, and now he’s a Cub, and Epstein did that, because it’s not about personal loyalties, but loyalty to the plan, and lord help Maddon if Walter Alston becomes available.

In the realm of baseball franchises and the men who lead them, the Cubs needed Maddon more than he needed them. Because they are, no matter where Baseball America ranks them vs. where the NL Central ranks them, the Cubs.

So, it seems, the Cubs were willing – not willing, eager – to trample upon the plan already in place, along with the man hired to manage that plan, that being a wholly decent Rick Renteria.

Maddon resigned Friday. Five days of rumors ensued, many of those involving the Cubs. And on the day of the World Series’ Game 7 surfaced a report by CBS Sports that the Cubs had, indeed, hired Maddon. By Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported the Cubs and Maddon were nearing a “historic deal,” while Maddon’s agent insisted there was no agreement, and around they went.

Assuming the paperwork gets signed, the unfortunate casualty is Renteria, the baseball soul who’d been hired not even a year ago, and who in the absence of public support from Cubs management was compelled this week to release a statement of his own.

“Notwithstanding all the speculation,” he’d said, “I continue to focus my offseason preparation on achieving the goal we established from the start: bringing a championship to Chicago.”

It was so sad. Humiliating, you’d imagine. So humiliating, were the final negotiations with Maddon to go sideways Epstein would have had to fire Renteria anyway, because you can’t have an employee kicked to the curb and then dragged back into the clubhouse and reinstalled as team leader and organizational conscience.

Fortunately, the Cubs could simply hide Renteria in the pile of rubble that used to be their bleachers.

It’s a vicious business with now billions of dollars in play, so it seems there is little room for sentimentality, or yesterday’s decisions. Even from within the vicious business there is gnawing disapproval over how the marriage of the Cubs and Maddon went down, whether the Cubs chased Maddon while he was still employed and they already had a good man who deserved better in that chair. Or whether Maddon chased the Cubs when there already was a good man who deserved better in that chair. Or they simply fell into each other’s arms.

Maybe the criticism is in part born of jealousy, because Maddon, again, is very good at what he does, and he is a wonderful, interesting, smart man whom nobody wouldn’t construct a franchise around. It’s a bottom-line game, everybody knows that, and better than most the Cubs understand what the bottom looks like. So, given the opening, they’d take their shot and undoubtedly would justify themselves as honoring the best interests of the franchise and their deserving fans.

This will pass and the Cubs, someday, will win. In a vacuum, hiring Maddon is a brilliant and even necessary move. Maddon is the rare manager who seems to add wins from both the top step and the clubhouse. He will change the culture at Wrigley Field, just as he did at The Trop. The city will fall in love with him, and he will love it back. He’ll wave at long-suffering Cubs fans from the saddle of his mountain bike as he cruises the streets of the North Side, among them. They’ll toast his arrival with a plastic cup of Budweiser, and he’ll return their gesture with a good Pinot Noir, and they’ll fight a century’s history together.

It all makes sense, and if these prospects are what the evaluators – professional and amateur – say they are, then the Cubs could very well win, and win soon, and win professionally.

If not, someone might get curious about all this change in the manager’s office. At that point, lord help Epstein if Branch Rickey becomes available.

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