Welcome into the House of L podcast. I am Lawrence Holmes. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

We are brought to you by Aurelio's Pizza. Aurelio's Pizza. It's the sauce. And I got some sauce for you today. I think Joe would be happy that both Joe Aurelio and Joe Madden would be happy that I'm telling you that it's the sauce.

Because Joe loves cooking it. In fact, inside of this interview, he gives you a couple of his recipes of things that he's doing on the grill and all sorts of other stuff. Beyond being a World Series winning baseball manager, he's also a restaurant tour. So he knows he knows stuff.

I'm super excited for you to hear this episode. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Joe Madden was a significant figure in my career. I guess technically he is. He's not gone anywhere.

He's super significant when the solo show launched in what was that 2018? When I did that solo show, we had the rights to the Cubs and I was kind of surprised that the Cubs were okay with me doing the Joe Madden show.

Subsequently, they've been totally okay with me doing the David Ross show, which I enjoy quite a bit and real talk. That's why everyone there knows I'm a white socks fan. Everyone, everyone knows that I'm a white socks fan.

And I thought it was cool that they were okay handing Joe over to me and saying, no, Lawrence can handle it. He's going to do good shows with Joe Madden. And I thought that we ended up doing great show shout out to Tony Gil for helping me put together the format that we were going to use to talk with Joe and allowing me to go outside of my very sometimes serious interview.

And I thought I was going to do it myself to allow me to have fun with Joe. The numbers that we would get on on those interviews, those shows, those Tuesdays at noon with Joe were huge.

People tuned in, we made news. The beatwriters were all listening to the show and Joe and I would have a great time.

It allowed people to see me in a very different way than they had seen me before. And if there were issues, Joe and I didn't always agree, we were able to debate stuff occasionally. And I always felt like I came out of the conversation having a better understanding of how baseball works and how Joe works.

He was always kind, he was always on time. And we had a great time, like a great, great time. I feel like we built a friendship on top of us having this like professional relationship.

I would go and see Joe a few times a year at the ballpark. He would volunteer to come and hang out in studio, which he didn't have to do, but he did.

And we had a really great time. I went to go see him when he took the job in Anaheim and he was so happy. We get into that inside of our conversation, which you'll hear in a second.

But, you know, I've chosen my phone. You know what I mean? I occasionally text Joe if I have questions about stuff.

So I'm glad that he is out here living his life. He's got a new book out, which is the whole reason that we're doing like a long form interview. It's called Book of Joe.

I have the digital copy of it. I'm looking waiting for my hard copy. It's really good. And as I said about David Ross's book, teammate, if you want to get some insight into the man, the book is a good way to do it.

Joe wrote the book with Tom Verducci, one of the most respected baseball people in our business. I think that you'll enjoy it. There's a ton about the building up of the World Championship Cubs team.

But there's also a ton about Hazelton. You'll get an idea of what Joe's philosophies are. In some cases, I think he's a little bit misunderstood. He makes things fairly clear, though, inside of this interview that two of us did.

Here about his relationship with front offices and when it comes to how do you use numbers and what's the most effective messaging tool to give to players when it comes to the numbers. It's really, really good.

But I will always be grateful to Joe for what he did for the score and what he did for our radio show that we used to do.

I think that we would have had success. But him giving his stamp of approval to it kind of launched us in a way that we weren't expecting to be launched.

And I'm very grateful to him for being as gracious and as kind as he was. And being interesting. That's another thing.

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