Cubs' Maddon makes good on 'day at the beach' promise

CHICAGO (AP) Cubs manager Joe Maddon made good on his promise to give Pedro Strop a ''day at the beach'' on Sunday after the reliever bailed Chicago out of a ninth-inning jam Saturday to preserve a 5-4 win.

Before Sunday's game against the Cardinals, Strop's locker was set up with a beach chair, an ice bucket full of beer bottles, a margarita and other beach paraphernalia.

Maddon promised Strop an off day, too.

''I wanted to really make it really emphatic that he was not playing,'' Maddon said.

Maddon is a TV pitchman for a Chicago-area liquor store chain and was asked if he mixed the margarita that was in front of Strop's locker. He didn't.

''I would have done the bloody mary if I had been given the opportunity,'' Maddon said. ''I'm more of a bloody mary kind of guy, although that's definitely more of a margarita setting.''