Jim Hendry refused to blame anyone but himself during his emotional press conference (audio) addressing his recent firing as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. He spoke at length about being honored to have been given the opportunity in the first place and acknowledged that he "didn't win enough games."
Jim Hendry At Press Conference: ‘I Will Leave Here With Nothing But Gratefulness’
“I will leave here with nothing but gratefulness,” Hendry said while fighting back tears. “To be a part of an organization for 17 years, not many get to do that. Not many get to be the GM for nine without a world championship. I got more than my fair chance to do that. I’m disappointed that we didn’t do it in years 5-7 when i thought we could.”
Hendry said he was first informed that he would be fired back on July 22, but had been asked to stick around to see the Cubs through the trade deadline and help them with signing some of their key draft picks. He said he chose to stay around because “it would have been shameful” not to.
“It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be,” Hendry said of his final month or so on the job. “I was still throwing stuff in the box when we lost. I didn’t really change much, which was good.”
Hendry called keeping news of his dismissal out of the press the entire time was “probably one of the best kept secrets in Cubs history.”
While Hendry may stuck around to help get the Cubs through some key personnel decisions, he said he purposefully didn’t make some of the bigger ones.
“I think if I was the one making them and they didn’t work out, the person after me would have had to wear some of those for longer,” he said.
“It would have been easy to trade some of those guys to make it look like we were cleaning the deck. But we felt that was a decision that the next guy needed to make. The next person oughta be making some of the decisions on these guys.”
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