CHICAGO — The colorful hand-written notes have been written over the years and then preserved for posterity's sake on an iPad. But they also remain stored in the mind of Joe Maddon, serving as a constant reminder to live in the moment when the temptation lies in focusing instead on the big picture.

Some of the philosophical phrases are more well-known than others. Maddon’s four-word mantra, “Try Not To Suck” is remembered as the theme of the magical summer that the baseball lifer masterminded the World Series curse that had lived on Chicago’s North Side for the previous 108 years. Others, however, have remained just as meaningful and useful to Maddon since his stay in Chicago was cut short faster than he expected.

But now, with Maddon out of baseball for the first time in more than three decades, the epiphanies that were birthed in various stages of Maddon’s career serve the 68-year-old well as he navigates a life that, at least for now, has nothing to do with the game to which he has been previously adjoined.

How long that will last remains unknown.

Maddon, who was fired by the Los Angeles Angels earlier this year, has established enough of a winning track record certainly to almost draw the off-season attention of teams looking to fill their managerial vacancies.

But for a free spirit who has always lived by the rule of being himself while turning conventional wisdom on its head, whether Maddon steps back into the dugout may seem like more of when, not if, but — in his thinking, will have to represent the right fit.

His baseball sabbatical has proven to be the appropriate time for the book so many have pushed him to write for years. “The Book Of Joe” will be released on Tuesday at a time when Maddon has focused more on golf, gardening and grilling than on following a game that he has chosen not to follow since being fired.

The book, written by Maddon and baseball writer and author Tom Verducci, is biographical in one sense, but also offers Maddon the opportunity to use the phrases he has come to live by to guide readers through his baseball journey. Maddon will be making two appearances in the Chicago area to promote the book on Nov. 16 and will be at events at the Union Club of Chicago (11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m.) and one at Anderson's Booksellers in Downers Grove at 7 p.m.

While that journey has reached a crossroads after Maddon was fired from his previous two jobs, including with the Chicago Cubs three years after he led them to the 2016 World Series championship, the time away has allowed Maddon to reflect on himself and the way his unique managerial style may translate to a possible next stop. After all, when front office executives find fault with the way Maddon’s philosophical approach carries over to the day-to-day running of a Major League club, it causes a man who is always thinking to rethink his position no matter how much his ways have led to winning baseball and two World Series appearances in the past.

“You lose a little bit of your confidence in what you’re doing, you do, because you’re being questioned so much even after you’ve had so much success,” Maddon told Patch last week. “You do become a little gun-shy. I think it’s just normal.”

Being normal has never been Maddon’s style. For a man who fashioned himself by the phrase, "When corny becomes cool," Maddon introduced costume-styled road trips and zoo animal visits to the Cubs when he was brought to Chicago’s North Side in 2014. His unconventional approach became accepted by the Cubs, who reached the National League playoffs five times and won the World Series during Maddon’s tenure before everything flipped in 2019.

Many of the practices that became routine and that are outlined throughout “The Book of Joe” were suddenly prohibited by former Cubs President Theo Epstein, who became at philosophical odds with Maddon in his season in Chicago. Just three years after Maddon had gazed out at an estimated five million people in Grant Park at the team’s World Series rally, the Maddon Way became unacceptable with Epstein and then-general manager Jed Hoyer, who fired Maddon despite an announcement that the two sides had mutually agreed to part ways.

Maddon told Patch that his final year in Chicago was never a clash of personalities with Epstein, but instead a season when the two saw things completely differently. After years of being in lockstep with one another, the 2019 season became one of discomfort that resembled an emotional separation and ultimately a divorce between the Cubs and Maddon.

Maddon acknowledges that he presumed the way things broke down between himself and Cubs brass to be his fault in real time in 2019 — a season which he breaks down in great detail in his new book. But after reflecting on the season in the years since and after hearing from people inside that were inside the Cubs clubhouse and dugout in that final season, Maddon says he now sees things differently.

“I felt as if it was my fault for retreating a little bit when I should have stuck to my guns a little more firmly,” Maddon told Patch, admitting it affected the way he went into the Angels job.

“Even though I knew the methods were good, going into the Angels (job), I was a little more reticent about doing things a little differently, quite frankly. (You think), yeah, maybe you are wrong, maybe the guys have changed, maybe it is different. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But then you’ve got guys asking you, ‘Why aren’t you doing this anymore?’ You get conflicting messages. You need full support from whoever you’re working with to be prodded to do everything you had been doing.”

Despite the way things ended in Chicago, Maddon will never lose sight of the better times. From the way he was beloved by fans for the most part on the city’s North Side to a 2016 World Series in which the Cubs erased a three games to one deficit against Cleveland to capture their first title since 1908, Maddon will carry lasting memories with him of his time here as long as he lives.

Maddon says his lasting snapshot will be the image that is now part of his personal collection of photos. Taken from behind him as he looks out on the sea of humanity in Grant Park, the image of Maddon preparing to speak to Cubs fans after the Game 7 championship-clinching victory in Cleveland will live with him forever.

Even if the words he spoke don’t. In "The Book of Joe," Maddon likens that moment to the one musician Richie Havens experienced as he prepared to open Woodstock in 1969. Six years after Maddon's moment, he says that that moment — in which he allowed his stream of consciousness to carry him through — will be the one he chooses to remember most.

“You can’t ever replicate that,” Maddon said. “That’s incomparable, but attach 108 years to that. That can happen again in what? 2124? That just doesn’t happen. So that’s my shot, my Chicago thing.

"Then, there's Wrigley Field, and walking into Wrigley Field on any day? Whenever I see pictures of that ballpark, I think to myself, 'Wow, I got to work there for five years.'"

As much magic that lives in that moment, though, it doesn’t figure to be the last winning Maddon does. He speaks in terms of when he returns to the game rather than if, although he won’t allow himself to get wrapped in too many what-if moments.

For now, he is enjoying being back in his native Pennsylvania, where, as of last week, he had played golf 91 of the previous 95 days with varying levels of success. He is living his best life, sleeping better than he has in years, constantly reading, meditating, drinking good wine and enjoying the company of family and friends.

Life is good for Joe Maddon, and in the moments when he finds his mind running and thinking ahead, Maddon falls back on those simple hand-written phrases that once came as epiphanies but that now keep him Zen in the moments when his mind tends to speed up faster than he wants.

“That’s when you just have to step away and not over-think it,” Maddon told Patch. “Keep it simple. Don’t get too nuts right now. (I’ve) gone through a lot in the past year and you've gone through basically another life change by being permitted to do whatever you want to do on a daily basis which hasn’t happened since, shoot, when you're in college or on summer vacation.

“So, I’m giving myself lots of time. I don’t prod myself. It’s just one of those times when you wait for the next epiphany, you keep your ears open, your eyes open, try not to say too much and I think the answers will come to me. That’s exactly where I’m at.”

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