He had vowed to come in two weeks early to get into shape, but arrived only a day before the team’s other position players. It was the first indication that he did not really want to be there. He quietly passed out 40 copies of The Way It Is to his new teammates and coaches. He did not hold any massive book signings or conduct any press conferences. He kept to himself on a team composed mostly of younger players, save for slugger Frank Howard and a few others. Elliott Maddox made a distinctly different first impression the next day. A 23-year-old black outfielder, he had come over to the Senators from the Detroit Tigers as part of the Denny McLain trade. Street-smart from having grown up in East Orange, New Jersey, and book smart on his way to graduating from the University of Michigan, Maddox learned from the antiwar protests at Ann Arbor how to stand up for himself. On Maddox’s first day in Pompano Beach, he pasted a “Free Angela Davis” sticker above the nameplate on his locker.
