Today the Chicago Cubs did what they should have done about 4 years ago: they fired general manager Jim Hendry.

Cubs owner Tom Ricketts had this to say about the decision.

“We just didn’t win enough games,” Ricketts said. “Nothing should diminish Jim’s tenure here. We won three division titles while he was here. … Jim is truly a first-class individual and we’ll all miss seeing him here in the office.”

Hendry did oversee the Cubs winning first place 3 times, but in recent years, he’d lavished large contracts onto players who underperformed and became untradeable, including Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez.

The search for a new GM begins immediately.

While the Reds were visiting the Washington Nationals this week, the Nationals were planning a tribute to the armed forces by wearing armed forces hats through batting practice and the game on Tuesday. They got to wear them for the BP, but MLB prohibited them for the actual game. From a story on The Post Game:

This was the Nats’ first home game since 30 soldiers riding in a helicopter were killed in Afghanistan on August 6th. But Commissioner Bud Selig’s top executives stopped it from happening.

MLB says that they reserve special hat days for nation-wide tributes when all of the teams wear the same (ugly) tribute caps. Myself, I’m not exactly outraged but kind of mystified as to why MLB would go out of their way to put a stop to this recognition of the armed forces. Is there some slippery slope here that I’m not seeing? If they allowed this, would it be just a matter of time till the players were all wearing beer helmets on the field or something?