Chicago Cubs

Joe Maddon Launches Into Epic Rant After Controversial Call

After getting steamed about a call against his team on Saturday, Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon went on a sarcastic rant about new safety rules that he would implement if he were in charge of the baseball world.

Maddon, whose Cubs lost two of three games to the St. Louis Cardinals over the weekend, was upset by a call during Saturday’s loss where Ian Happ slid through the second base bag. Umpires immediately called Anthony Rizzo out at first base, creating a double play and negating a run scored by Kyle Schwarber, and after they upheld the call on video review, Maddon was annoyed.

In a stream of consciousness rant, Maddon called for several new safety procedures and rules for the league.

“I think we should consider now eliminating the head-first slide to protect base-runners,” he said. “That is really a dangerous slide. To head-first slide you can hurt your hand, and your eye can be poked out. All different things can occur on a head-first slide.”

That wasn’t all for Maddon as he continued his thoughts. He also called for mandatory facemasks, and he also insisted that pitchers should be “forced now to wear helmets.”

The manager’s coup de grace happened at the end of the discussion, when he came up with a rule that men everywhere should have some interesting feelings on: mandatory cup checks.

“When I coached third in the minor leagues, I always wore a cup,” he said. “So I think there needs to be  a cup check for players around the field in order to prevent the loss of future families.”

Maddon says that all of his proposed rule changes are “much more dangerous” than Happ’s slide.

h/t to the Chicago Tribune and CSN Chicago for the quotes

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