Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse

(Paperback)

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With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and Fox Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions. It took 108 years, but it really happened. The Chicago Cubs are once again World Series champions. How did a team of untested young players and carefully selected veterans come together to break the longest championship drought in sports With exclusive interviews with all of the people integral to the World Series victory, The Cubs Way chronicles the Chicago Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball, revealing the keys to this incredible achievement. Beginning with Theo Epstein's first season with the team in 2012, Tom Verducci shows how Epstein went beyond "Moneyball" thinking when planning, step-by-step, the path to a championship. Leading the organization with a manual he helped developed called "The Cubs Way," Epstein focused on the mental side of the game as much as the physical, emphasizing chemistry and character as well as statistics. To accomplish his goal, Epstein needed manager Joe Maddon, an eccentric innovator, as his counterweight on the Cubs' bench. A man who encourages themed road trips and a lack of rules to keep his team loose, Maddon mixed New Age thinking with Old School leadership to help his players find their edge. The Cubs Way tracks the untold stories of how key players such as Rizzo, Bryant, Schwarber, Russell, Arrieta, and Lester were deftly brought into the organization by Epstein, and guided by Maddon to outperform expectations. Capping off the epic tale, The Cubs Way relives the magnificent highs and the precarious lows of the instant-classic seven-game World Series. From manager's game plans to rain-delay pep talks, Verducci provides a previously unseen view from the bench, inside the locker room, and even in the owner's box. This is the World Series unveiled. The Cubs Way is a celebration of an iconic team and its journey to a World Championship that fans and readers will cherish for years to come.

Reviews

"One of the best baseball stories ever, told by one of the best baseball writers ever. It does not get any better than this." George F. Will

Few who have covered the game in any era can match Tom Verducci's combination of baseball insight and elegance as a writer. Those dual qualities make him the perfect guy to not only capture the experience of what the Cubs at long last achieved, but to explain the thinking and planning that led to last Fall's crescendo of emotions. Bob Costas

"Verducci, a longtime baseball writer for Sports Illustrated, is perhaps the perfect scribe to tell this definitive tale, a generational talent who can talk numbers and remain awed at the games beauties. In one moment hes describing player valuations, and in the next hes admiring a grand painting. And to fully understand a modern-day championship team, thats essential."The Washington Post

The Cubs Way is a lush accounting of one of the most thrilling championship runs in American sports historyby the numbers and by the personalities that made it happen.The Wall Street Journal

"The Cubs' epic triumph almost demanded that Tom Verducci, arguably the best baseball writer of this generation, weigh in with his perspective. The longtime Sports Illustrated veteran delivers in a big way with unique analysis that takes a deep, deep dive in trying to explain the wizardry of Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer,Joe Maddonand the entire Cubs braintrust."The Chicago Tribune

A must-read for any Cubs fan. SB Nation

InMr. Verduccis entertaining book, he notes that the construction of a championship team is granular and the final picture is a Seurat painting with many tiny dots of color and millions of reasons and thousands of cascading events. Hes right: The artistic brush containing the power of positivity helped make theChicago Cubswinners once more.The Washington Times

Author Bio

TOM VERDUCCI is Sports Illustrated's senior baseball writer and a two-time National Sportswriter of the Year. He is also a two-time Emmy Award-winning game and studio analyst for Fox Sports and MLB Network. He was the co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre.