Cubs fire GM Hendry after 9 years on the job
CHICAGO — The Chicago Cubs fired general manager Jim Hendry on Friday with another disappointing season that will add to their historic championship drought coming to a close.
The Cubs announced the move before a game with the rival St. Louis Cardinals and said assistant GM Randy Bush will serve as interim general manager.
“First and foremost, we just didn’t win enough games,” chairman Tom Ricketts said. “Our team’s performance over the last two years is not where it needs to be.”
Ricketts said it’s time for a “fresh approach in our baseball leadership” and the search will begin immediately. He said the new general manager will come from the outside, meaning Bush is not in the running, and that he will consult “industry veterans” in his search.
Ricketts also said the new GM will report directly to him, and that whoever gets the job will determine whether manager Mike Quade returns for a second full season.
Hendry said he was informed July 22 that he would not be back next season but stayed on through the trade deadline and long enough to sign all the draft picks.
“I just thought the right thing to do is just to let him know, and in that conversation, I said, `We have work to do still,”‘ Ricketts said. “We had a great draft. We need someone to focus on making sure that those players get from that draft board to our organization, and we had a trade deadline coming up.”
He said it was a “credit” to Hendry’s character “that we were able to operate under that kind of awkward situation and do as well as we have done.”
Hendry said: “I could have left that day and Tom would have understood but I didn’t think that was the right thing for the group. I care too much about the people who work under me. It would have been shameful.”
The 56-year-old Hendry was named general manager in July 2002 and he spent 17 years overall with the organization. He paused several times to compose himself while talking with reporters.
“Not many get to be the GM for nine without a world championship,” he said. “So I got more than my fair chance to do that. I’m disappointed in myself that we didn’t get it done in the first five to seven years when I thought we could. I’m very thankful for the way I’ve been treated.”
Asked about Ricketts, Hendry said: “I think he understood that we probably weren’t going to be great the way things were set up. Moving forward there are a lot of huge decisions that have to be made this offseason and I think that if I was the one making them and they all didn’t work out, then the person after me would have to wear some of those for longer.”
