Dream job puts MacPhail into relaxed state of mind

Andy MacPhail looked at ease as he relaxed in the visitors dugout decked out in a bright orange Baltimore Orioles shirt.

And to hear him tell it, there was a good reason for that.

"I told the story when I first went to Baltimore," MacPhail said Tuesday at Wrigley Field. "A few years ago, a bunch of us were having lunch. We all had to go around the table, and we all had to pick the job we wanted before we retired. And I picked this one. I've got a lot of fond memories of the area. I grew up there, the first team I rooted for."

The job MacPhail is talking about is president of baseball operations for the Orioles.

From late 1994 until the last day of the 2006 season, MacPhail had what many people would consider the dream job of all dream jobs: president and CEO of the Cubs. MacPhail resigned from that job after a nightmarish '06 season and landed with the Orioles the next year.

This baseball blueblood came to Chicago during the strike of 1994, with the promise of good things ahead. The Cubs won a wild card in 1998 and came within five outs of the World Series in 2003.

Still, MacPhail voiced pride, and maybe even a little defiant pride, in what the organization accomplished during his tenure. Certainly, McPhail cleaned up a chaotic front office, and the Cubs gained a reputation in baseball circles as an organization that operated with class and dignity.

"We did a lot of things that I think will bear the test of time that I'm pleased with," he said. "We had a very simple goal, which was to get to the World Series, and we didn't do that. In the end, I didn't achieve that."

MacPhail cited a rebuilt farm system, giving credit to Cubs general manager Jim Hendry and farm director Oneri Fleita.

He chalked up to "just baseball" the Cubs falling short in '03.

"I wish we'd gotten the last (five) outs, but we didn't," he said. "Off we go, and move on."

Since MacPhail moved on, the Cubs have gone on big-time spending sprees, acquiring the likes of Alfonso Soriano and Kosuke Fukudome and ponying up $91.5 million to keep pitcher Carlos Zambrano.

It's hard to picture MacPhail making some, or even any, of those moves. The one criticism that's been leveled at his regime is that he didn't fully use the vast resources of the Tribune Co, the team's owner.

"I have no regrets," he said. "They (Trib bosses) were more than fair. We'd go in, and we'd have a plan. We would figure out what it is. If we wanted to go over it, we'd seek their permission, if we felt like we had to."

When pressed whether he was too conservative in using those resources, MacPhail diplomatically held his ground.

"I try to answer that without putting the finger on somebody else," he said. "We would go in, and we wold determine in October what our operating plan was going to be. We had the freedom to operate within those (budget guidelines) without restriction, where if you exceeded those, you needed their permission. I can't think of a time where I was ever not given permission to do something I thought was important to us. But it's not like we were banking millions, either, at the time. I guess that's the best answer I can possibly give you."