ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Joe Maddon recalled the time he told Mark Langston, seated in the front row on Thursday afternoon at Maddon's introduction as manager of the Los Angeles Angels, that he was going to someday make No. 70 famous.
He harkened back to a night in 1975, at the Drury Plaza Broadway Hotel in Wichita, Kansas, when he signed his first professional contract for $0, with a bottle of Chivas Regal in one hand and a pen in the other. He talked about traveling to the minor leagues for the first time, and the bright yellow puddle-jumper plane he rode alongside Dickie Thon and the bomber leather jacket he left at the Hertz counter of John Wayne Airport.