Hendry felt obliged to spend freely

GM: Cubs 'let a lot of people down' in awful '06 season

MESA, Ariz. -- Every baseball team with a managerial vacancy had Lou Piniella on its radar this offseason, so how did general manager Jim Hendry sell the star manager on the Cubs?

''Well,'' Piniella said Wednesday, ''Jim told me when he hired me that he had a satchel full of money.''

Piniella followed the line with a hearty laugh, but the joke's not far from reality.

Piniella's arrival was the beginning of a massive makeover that cost the Cubs more than $300 million. This was an unprecedented rebuilding effort that simultaneously raised eyebrows around the industry and hopes on the North Side. After a domino line of disappointments the last four years -- and a stack of pink slips at Clark and Addison -- Hendry was left with few alternatives.

As the last man standing after a 96-loss season, Hendry had to get ultra-aggressive to keep the best job he's ever had.

''We all had a real bad feeling that we let a lot of people down,'' Hendry said of the Cubs' decision to pour millions into the face-lift. ''You put 3 million people in the seats and you have that kind of year, you almost get to the point where you feel like you owe 'em one.''

When president Andy MacPhail and manager Dusty Baker became casualties after a last-place season, many fans and media felt Hendry also should pay with his job. After all, he's the one who allowed the Cubs to enter 2006 a big bat short and with too thin a pitching staff.

The critics forgot, however, that Hendry's first big coup as GM was hiring Baker after a 2002 World Series run with the San Francisco Giants. Hendry then swung the midseason deals in 2003 that brought Aramis Ramirez, Kenny Lofton and Randall Simon from the Pittsburgh Pirates -- three players pivotal in the Cubs reaching the postseason.

Hendry strengthened the Cubs before the 2004 season, adding first baseman Derrek Lee, veteran pitcher Greg Maddux and catcher Michael Barrett to a National League Championship Series team. He engineered the complicated four-team trade that brought shortstop Nomar Garciaparra in July 2004.

But Hendry is haunted by the last two seasons that have left a stain on his resume.

''It started off so good for a couple of years, and it hasn't gone very well the last year and a half,'' Hendry said. ''The people that support the Cubs, the city of Chicago, everybody deserves a lot better product than what we had last year. So I certainly put a lot of that responsibility on myself.

''Going into '04, the whole world was picking us to win the World Series. I mean, I thought, 'Boy, we are really, really a lot better.' Of all the things that happened [in 2003], you think about Game 6 or Bartman and all of that stuff, I really look at '04 with equal dissatisfaction that we didn't get in.''

By 2006, the injury-plagued Cubs were a mess, and Baker clearly wasn't the answer. This was tough territory for Hendry, who firmly believed the Cubs had found a manager who would win for years.

The decision to go in another direction was made in July. This was one of the low points of the Hendry era.

''In fairness to Dusty, Connie Mack wouldn't have won a great majority of the games the last couple of months,'' Hendry said. ''I didn't make the decision I made on Dusty because we didn't play well in August or September. It was just something I felt we had to do to move forward.

''It wasn't an easy thing to do, and I certainly should share a large portion of the responsibility when things don't go well. I'm not one of these guys who puts it on somebody else or will finger-point to him and say, 'Gee, everything else was great. It's your fault.' That's not the case. It was something I thought about a long time. It was one of those things that was wearing on me, but in the end, I felt it was the direction we had to go.''

And he felt equally as strong that Piniella was the right man to rescue the Cubs -- and ultimately Hendry's career.

During the Cubs' organizational meetings in October, the wish list was clear. Hire Piniella, re-sign Ramirez and sign Alfonso Soriano to be the new center fielder and leadoff hitter. Also, add two starting pitchers.

But the Cubs had a similar road map a year earlier that centered around acquiring free-agent shortstop/leadoff hitter Rafael Furcal. Those plans never fell together, and the Cubs were left with an incomplete team.

This offseason, Piniella was the key to the puzzle.

''When we left the organizational meetings with our plan, you can't say, 'Oh, we're going to go get Soriano,' like that's going to happen,'' Hendry said. ''I don't think we really were in the top five or six of [Soriano's] choices originally. We had a lot of ground to make up.''

Enter Piniella and a clandestine meeting in a South Florida hotel room on Dec. 6.

''I give Lou a lot of the credit,'' Hendry said. ''I could tell when we left that hotel room that day, we had a chance. I could tell that there was a real good early click between [Soriano] and Lou.''

During a frenzied winter meetings, Hendry landed in the hospital, complaining of chest pains that led to an angioplasty. He closed a deal with free-agent pitcher Ted Lilly while hooked up to an EKG machine.

How much did that episode change Hendry the GM?

''Zero,'' he said. ''I feel better now than I have in 10 years. I really do.

''It was a hell of a scare. I can't say I'm happy I went through it, but in the long run, it was probably the best thing for me.''

How has he changed since taking the job in July 2002?

''You gain from the experience,'' Hendry said. ''It started out so good, I just figured we wouldn't be in the spot we were in last year. I never saw that coming.

''I guess what I've learned is you can't have too much depth, you can't have too much pitching.''

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