Joe Maddon will have a book in him one day, and if you listen closely, you will hear some of the chapters long before he ever puts pen to paper.

On the day he returned to the field and the organization where he first came to the major leagues 13 seasons ago after an unlikely rise from a lowly organizational catcher, Maddon celebrated the ascent from scout to minor league manager to highly respected bench coach with the Angels to manager of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

There’s no manager in baseball who invites players to think for themselves more than Maddon. His positive nature is enhanced by a willingness to push the neurological side of baseball. And, let’s face it: anyone who has spent any amount of time around professional baseball knows that brains do not necessarily go hand in hand with bats and balls.

“The biggest influence comes from the formulation of thought,” Maddon said. “When you read and something spurs you to think in another direction, I think that’s always good, because here (in baseball), there’s so much of a lack of creativity.”

These are some of the thoughts that compose a manager’s mind: running a game, picking the opportune count to run or pitchout, deciding when a pitcher has enough left and when he’s trying to con the manager. A baseball season is a thousand decisions, but for Maddon, the first decision came long before the first pitch.

He would replace Tampa Bay’s apathy with aggressiveness. Lou Pinella, a living landmine, made it difficult for players to accept any message. Maddon took out his colored pens and his books and installed thought and confidence. Gone are Pinella’s tirades. In are Maddon’s motivational messages written on the bottom of the lineup card.

Though the Rays (39-50) are in last place in the AL East, Maddon’s stated goal for the Devil Rays is to finish above .500 in the second half. The trick is to win while growing with young talent, which requires a measure of patience and a willingness to put teaching over the bottom line long enough to cultivate the notion that winning isn’t only impossible, but expected. It also takes time to build a pitching staff around 22-year-old left-hander Scott Kazmir.

The result is Maddon’s very own laboratory, a team perfect for his strengths.

As veteran Devil Rays scout Jerry Gardner said with a degree of elegant crustiness: “You gotta beat us now. At least we don’t do it for you anymore.”

Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli and Jorge Cantu are each 24. Jonny Gomes is 25. Maddon is 52 with a 25-year old’s energy.

“Certain parts of this game don’t require creativity, such a situational hitting,” he said. “As it was in 1900, it should be in 2006. Then there’s so many different things that are out there now that weren’t out there 40 or 50 years ago. How do you incorporate all that?”

Maddon sums up the modern question of western society. How do you reconcile the information technology makes available with the basic need to express human thought? Where do the mindless regurgitation of numbers end and the soul of the game – dirt under the finger nails, calluses on the hands – begin?

From scouting Maddon took listening, from coaching he took teaching, from his years on the Angel bench he took communication.

“His connection between the clubhouse and the coach’s room…we honestly trusted him, his word and his thoughts,” Angel second baseman Adam Kennedy said. “The communication level was tremendous, even just to have someone to vent to occasionally. You could always trust that if it did get relayed, it would get relayed in the right way, in a way understood by both sides. The tunnel he made, from here to there, I don’t imagine is very common in baseball.”

Maddon acknowledges that it takes courage to be a creative thinker. He recalled his scouting days, where he said he learned a lesson that still guides him. “I could scout with my eyes closed,” he said. “But I could not do it with my ears closed.”

Before the game, he accepted a framed No.70 jersey from the Angels. Maddon said he remembered that the road he has traveled is an accumulation of everything he’s read, the conversations he’s had, and the experiences and thoughts that continue to bring his intuition into the dugout. As he always does, he took it all in on a day he’ll bookmark in his memories.