BASEBALL: Cubs GM opens season for Irish
By CHRIS FEDERICO
Sports Writer
Last year, former Los Angeles Dodgers' head coach and Hall of Famer Tommy LaSorda set the tone for what would be one of Notre Dame baseball's best seasons by delivering the key speech at the team's opening night dinner.
Tuesday, the Irish hoped to extend that new tradition as Chicago Cubs' General Manager Jim Hendry served as the key speaker at Notre Dame baseball's 2003 Opening Night Ceremonies .
Hendry teamed up with Irish head coach Paul Mainieri to give Irish fans in the Joyce Center a night of baseball in the heart of winter.
"I've always lived and died Note Dame, I just wasn't good enough to play here or smart enough to get in," Hendry said. "Even before Paul got here, I've had a love affair with Notre Dame."
Hendry was invited to speak at the function by Mainieri, his close friend, and his long-time love of Notre Dame made the occasion an opportunity he could not turn down.
In addition to his close relationship with Mainieri, Hendry also has ties to Irish associate head coach Brian O'Connor, who played under Hendry at Creighton University and was an integral member of the 1991 Blue Jays squad that made a run to the College World Series.
Hendry also spent three years in the Florida Marlins' organization serving as a special assistant, scout and a minor league manager before joining the Cubs.
Several Irish fans in attendance with local loyalties to the Chicago Cubs listened attentively to the GM as he promised that his club would turn around its recent losing ways.
"It's time we won — we know that," Hendry said. "The `lovable loser' stuff doesn't fly with me. We owe the Cubs fans across the world a winning organization. We're going to make a lot of progress, and we're going to do it fast."
During the speech, Hendry jokingly made references to the different directions that the two clubs — the Irish and the Cubs — appear to be heading.
"We were embarrassingly bad last year," Hendry said. "It's kind of hard to believe I'm here speaking tonight. Notre Dame went to the College World Series, and we won 65 games, and I'm up here as the last guy talking? That doesn't make sense."
But the main focus of the evening was Notre Dame's spectacular 2002 season that saw the team win a school record 50 games, finish sixth in the nation and make its first appearance in the College World Series since 1957.
"It takes years of hard work to become an overnight sensation," Mainieri joked about his team's gradual rise to national prominence in the college baseball world. "The kids that have been in our program for the last nine years, the kids that have worked in near obscurity, have given everything that they have had to Notre Dame."
"The first seven years, I had some unbelievably talented kids, but we never had the opportunity to go to the World Series," he said. "When we went to Omaha last year, you could feel the contributions of those players. … In 2002, somehow, someway, we found a way to get over the hump."
Beginning with the program's first No. 1 ranking two years ago and continuing with its first appearance in the College World Series since 1957 last year, Notre Dame has continued to strengthen its position as one of the nation's elite baseball programs.
"I don't really know if you realize what you have here," Hendry said. "This is South Bend, Ind. There's four to five inches of snow on the ground, and this is still one of the top four or five baseball programs in the country. No longer is Notre Dame just that Northern cold-weather school that has a good year ever now and then."
As Notre Dame is just over two weeks away from its first game of the season, the question is starting to arise if the Irish can overcome the loss of five seniors — outfielders Steve Stanley and Brian Stavisky, third baseman Andrew Bushey, catcher Paul O'Toole and pitcher Drew Duff — and return to Omaha in the summer.
Hendry tried to answer that question for the Irish Tuesday night.
"Paul is downplaying the going back to Omaha thing, but I'm going to say right now, you're going back to Omaha," he said. "You're going back more than once here, and you're going to win a national championship here at Notre Dame in front off this whole country. I do believe that."
All Sports Stories for Wednesday, February 5, 2003
