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Joe Maddon is no typical baseball lifer.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays manager is Johnny Damon hip without the Hollywood and rocks Derek Jeter style minus the attitude. Take him out of uniform and he fits right in at the trendiest SoHo cafes with his trademark black-horned rim Hugo Boss glasses and uber-positive personality.

An avid cyclist who seeks out the top bike routes in each city he visits, Maddon also rolls the roads in his Corvette. His CD collection features Luciani Pavarotti and Bruce Springsteen. At home he gardens and makes a mean spaghetti bolognese.

Given time, the rookie skip might even make the Devil Rays cool.

"You don't blow up, you don't kneejerk it, you don't say something you're going to regret later, you just keep seeking the answer," Maddon says this past weekend, as his team was getting swept by the Toronto Blue Jays.

"As long as we hold our end together and stay true to ourselves, stay true to our plan, eventually the answer is going to show up."

The 53-year-old is going to need that kind of optimism with a payroll of about $35 million (U.S.) in the American League East, where the New York Yankees spend about six times as much, the Boston Red Sox nearly four times as much, and the Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles twice as much.

Since they began play as an expansion team in 1998, the club record for wins in a season is the 70 they posted in 2004. They've lost 100 games twice, 99 in two other years. This year they're 57-92 heading into Monday's play, including a dreadful 19-56 on the road.

They usually need a telescope to see the division front-runners by June.

"I'm really not worried about what anybody else is doing, quite frankly. They can spend all the money they want, that does not bother me," Maddon says. "It's about developing our guys to the point where we can compete against these other teams experience-wise. I know that also speaks to money because you're able to buy the veteran player that's been around more often. If we can just hold on and develop these young guys right ... and as we go fill in appropriately with the free agent that we have to be right upon, I'm OK with that.

"We have to be a little bit better than everyone else and I kind of like that, too."

Maddon's hiring last winter was part of an organizational house-cleaning following the club's takeover by new owner Stuart Sternberg. Most of the club's senior executives were also turned over, with Matthew Silverman hired as president, Andrew Friedman as executive vice-president of baseball operations and Gerry Hunsicker as senior VP of baseball operations.

Maddon had spent all of his previous 31 years in professional baseball with the Los Angeles Angels, who drafted him as a catcher back in 1975. The native of Hazelton, Pa., never moved beyond single-A but rose through the ranks as a hitting instructor and manager, spending most of the past 10 years as the Angels' bench coach.

He's trying to transplant that model to Tampa Bay.

"You come from a group that you've been with for so long and you come from a certain culture, a method of doing things," says Maddon. "Then you arrive someplace else where in a lot of ways I didn't like some of the stuff that was going on, internal stuff, the way people co-habitate, relationships of non-trust, things of that nature, and then you find out that's the reason why this group hasn't been that good, it's not because the left-fielder or the centre-fielder or the shortstop isn't good enough, it's about everything else.

"I was surprised in regard to the dysfunctional method that was going on here. I would almost bet that any organization that has not been successful if you really got the shovels out and dug in deeply, you'd find that same negative thread. We're eradicating that right now."

Having helped develop and coach the young Angels who won the World Series in 2002, the Devil Rays believe he's the man to mould a talented young core that features Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, Scott Kazmir, Delmon Young and B.J. Upton.

Positionally, their future seems bright but aside from Kazmir, their pitching is thin.

"The biggest thing for me is giving up the game late when you have the game won, which we've done often this year," says Maddon. "That, not only to a young group of players but also to a veteran group of players, is probably the most difficult situation to overcome on a nightly basis."

But Maddon feels all the pieces are in place.

"The ownership, tremendous. The new front-office personnel, fabulous," he says. "I really have a lot of faith in our coaching staff here and now it's starting to filter down to the players."

Something that can't happen soon enough for the long-suffering fans in Tampa Bay.

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WATCH THE POTTY MOUTH: Employees at radio and TV stations have been known to assemble tapes of their colleagues' on-air blunders and baseball broadcasters have certainly provided some fine fodder this season.

From Keith Hernandez's rant about a female massage therapist in the San Diego Padres dugout to Rick Sutcliffe's slurred cameo on a local Padres broadcast to Bert Blyleven's cursing during a live Minnesota Twins pre-game segment he thought wasn't being taped, it's been a year to forget for some men in the booth.

The miscues became instant Internet hits on sites like deadspin.com and youtube.com until they were removed because of copyright laws. Dig hard enough, however, and you can still find them.

"It's a reminder that you can never be too careful," says Warren Sawkiw, the analyst on the Toronto Blue Jays radio broadcast. "Whenever you're out in public you're on stage because of what we do."

Hernandez's slipup was the first and perhaps the worst. The New York Mets broadcaster, a former MVP first baseman, asked "Who is the girl in the (Padres) dugout?" after San Diego's full-time massage therapist Kelly Calabrese high-fived Mike Piazza after he hit a home run during an April 23 game.

Told later that Calabrese was with the Padres training staff, Hernandez repeated that she shouldn't have been in the dugout. "I won't say that women belong in the kitchen, but they don't belong in the dugout."

He then laughed and added: "You know I am only teasing. I love you gals out there — always have."

Hernandez was reprimanded by SportsNet New York.

Sutcliffe, a Cy Young award winner and ESPN baseball analyst, exercised equally poor judgment about three weeks later when he entered the booth during a Padres-Brewers broadcast after a long day of golf and drinking.

After first talking about golf and actor Bill Murray, who was with Sutcliffe at the game, the pitcher began to ramble after his daughter came up.

"She's on her way to Africa tomorrow," Sutcliffe said. "How about that? Over there on one of those missions, man. George Clooney — you been reading about all that, you been seeing that?"

Announcer Matt Vasgersian responded with surprise: "George Clooney?"

"Yeah, he's up there with the Congress, he's trying to get everybody to go over there and solve that thing."

Sutcliffe would proceed to ask Vasgersian about why he hadn't taken a job offer elsewhere before his microphone was cut off. He later apologized.

The Blyleven incident was different. After tripping up during the segment, he cursed twice while saying the crew needed to start over again, forgetting he was on the air. He was then informed that they were on live, to which he said in shock, "I didn't know that."

Blyleven apologized twice and was suspended five games.

"The Blyleven thing and others I've heard like it have really had a chilling effect on me because it's something we've all done taping something," says Mike Wilner, another member of the Blue Jays radio team. "If I'm taping something and I mess up, instead of the old days when I would let loose a barrage of curse words before I start again, I take care to not say anything that would offend people just in case it accidentally goes out on air."

Sound advice for broadcasters to keep in mind.