On the day of the 1992 amateur draft, Jim Hendry, then a scout for the newly formed Florida Marlins, was asked by scouting director Gary Hughes to come to the front of the room.
“I thought he was going to ask me about one of my players on the wall,” Hendry recalled. “Then he says, `Look, I hate to make you do this, but would you run up to Publix and get us some of those fat-free Fig Newtons?'”
Hendry was floored. After having been named national college Coach of the Year at Creighton University the previous spring, he had a fairly high opinion of himself. Now his ego shrank to the size of a penny.
“I didn’t show it to anybody,” Hendry said, “but I was down in the dumps.”
The lesson?
“Nobody really cares about what you’ve done in the past,” he said. “You have to start over and you have to do it the hard way.”
Hendry, 47, already has accomplished some things with the Cubs.
The farm system he put together while in charge of scouting and developing talent from 1995 to 1999 was ranked first last spring by Baseball America.
He spearheaded the March deal that sent Julian Tavarez and three minor-leaguers to Florida for closer Antonio Alfonseca and right-hander Matt Clement.
But after being promoted Friday to general manager, Hendry knows the slate is clean.
Now he will be evaluated by wins and losses.
“I’m confident he will aggressively execute whatever strategy he feels is the appropriate one for his team,” Cubs President Andy MacPhail said.
His team. Not MacPhail’s.
Hendry needs no approval to make a deal that either doesn’t affect the payroll or shrinks it.
He is only required to consult MacPhail on deals that exceed the budget.
MacPhail told Hendry about the promotion on Thursday, a day before manager Don Baylor was dismissed.
At his introductory news conference Friday, Hendry was subdued.
“That was a very tough day for me emotionally,” Hendry said.
“When I found out I was going to be general manager of the Chicago Cubs, it was a dream come true. When I left college coaching, I entered pro ball with the intention of being a GM. I couldn’t tell people that, but that was how I felt.
“I got along well with Don Baylor. I would have loved to have taken over as general manager when we were in first place.”
Hendry’s first call went to his older brother, John, a dentist in Lafayette, La.
“I was happy and proud of myself,” Hendry said. “I think I’m the right guy for the job. But it wasn’t a day to be ecstatic.”
Hendry is normally as mellow as Robin Williams after two pots of coffee.
While he tends to spout cliches in front of microphones, his true character is anything but ordinary.
He’s easy to spot on the field before games.
He’s the one chewing gum, tugging on his shirt, spitting, cracking jokes and talking on his cell phone–occasionally all at once.
“He’s always moving,” MacPhail said. “He’s going 100 percent 100 percent of the time.”
Cubs hitting coach Jeff Pentland shared a farm house with Hendry in Elmira, N.Y., in 1994 when Hendry managed and Pentland coached the Marlins’ Class A team.
“I never got any sleep,” Pentland recalled. “We didn’t have any shades. When the sun came up, it was like the atomic bomb went off. It’d be 6 in the morning and he’d say, `Let’s go to the ballpark.’
“Every extra minute we had, we had to be doing something.”
MacPhail remembered how the two took personality tests in 2000 at an executive session sponsored by Major League Baseball.
“Our personalities were in opposite quadrants,” MacPhail said. “He was much more extroverted and outgoing. He seeks out the company of people and derives his sustenance from others.
“I was more pensive. I need to look at it on paper and think it through.”
Hendry’s recollection?
“I am what I am,” he said. “Extroverted by nature, emotional, aggressive … blond.”
Hendry smiled.
“I appear to be happy and like there’s never anything wrong, but the things I take seriously, I take very seriously: my job, the people I care about and loyalty to the people I’ve been working for,” he said.
Hendry said he wished in some ways he were more like his boss, MacPhail.
“He’s a very caring guy, very intelligent, very organized,” he said. “Not ever capable of doing the wrong thing on purpose. He puts the bigger picture in front of himself.”
And MacPhail had this praise for Hendry: “He has a good sense of humor and a nice, affable way about him. But the engine underneath all that is a very competitive nature. He won’t be satisfied. Even if we were on track for an .800 winning percentage, he would still be looking to upgrade.’
MacPhail described Hendry as “all baseball all the time.”
As scouting director Hendry once spent 275 days on the road.
And on a rare day off from the ballpark last weekend, he attended his daughter Lauren’s tee-ball game. She went 3-for-3.
Hendry’s friends wonder how he will fit in with Tribune Co. executives.
“I don’t worry about that,” Hendry said. “I don’t think I ever tried to be someone different than who I am. I can’t sit in the same forums Andy can. I could never be the president of a club. That’s not me. But I’m comfortable being myself around the Tribune people.
“If they were worried about what I am, then I wouldn’t be sitting here. They’ve seen the same things everyone else has. I’m pretty much an open book.”
