Twelve years ago, Joe Maddon was introduced as the Cubs’ new savior at a Wrigleyville bar where he promised everyone a shot and a beer. The Hazleton Way, he called it.In the years before Maddon came to town, Cubs fans drank because of managerial decisions, not in honor of them, but he was brought in to change everything and he did.Throughout the years, the idea was that if a Cubs manager ever won a World Series, he’d be set for life in this city. No more paying for drinks or dinners. A job as long as he wanted it.Well, Maddon got the Cubs to the World Series. He got them to the parade. But reaching the mountaintop only means you have to go back down and do it again. Winning a World Series in the second year of a five-year deal did not result in a contract extension and three years later, Maddon was looking for a new gig. His eponymous restaurant shuttered and everyone moved on.The rest of the core, from Theo Epstein to Anthony Rizzo, left in the coming years. The team’s audacious dreams of a dynasty were waylaid by the cold, hard reality of sports. The Cubs made it to one more NLCS in 2017, and it took until 2025 for them to win another playoff series.“The main reason it’s hard (to repeat) is because it’s so hard to win one,” Epstein said to me in 2017.Mike Ditka got seven more years with the Bears after winning a Super Bowl and Ozzie Guillen got six after breaking Chicago’s long drought on the South Side. Maddon got just three.“I really thought it would last longer,” Maddon said in a recent phone conversation. “Quite frankly, I thought we would be there a little bit longer than five (years). The first four years we go to the playoffs and the record overall for five years is one of the best five-year stretches they’ve ever had.“And I’m not taking total responsibility for this, I’m just saying overall, the culture was flipped, we played good baseball on an annual basis, three consecutive NLCS and that’s not easy to do. I would have hoped to stay there longer, I’m not going to deny that, but it’s a short shelf life doing this particular job, and honestly, I’m so fortunate to have had the opportunity to manage there. The Chicago Cubs are the big leagues of the big league.”As the second stage of the Cubs’ 10th-anniversary festivities takes place this week, I talked to Maddon, who at 72 isn’t looking for another baseball job. He has, in a way, returned to nature. He lives on a golf course, owns some other land, mows his grass, plants his tomatoes and flowers, talks about baseball when he wants to and lives life as only he can.