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Hendry Cleansing Continues
The folks in the fine city of Park Ridge (Maine East, represent!) have found their window to try and remove the "Jim Hendry Way" signs that Cub fan and all-around criminal Rod Blagojevich put up on Northwest Highway. 
Schmidt said the request is nothing personal against Hendry, a Park Ridge resident, but the city never wanted the signs mounted in the first place.
Schmidt later added that he can't believe Hendry signed Milton Bradley while putting on his White Sox hat.
Speaking of Park Ridge, back around 2005, Jim Hendry walked into my Dad's bicycle shop in Park Ridge on Devon Avenue. My Dad, never a shy fella, immediately let it be known that his son writes for some website on the Internet about the Cubs. For whatever reason, Hendry didn't immediately bolt out of the place, but made some joke about how he hopes I write nothing but nice things. I can't be sure if my Dad would have even known the name of the website. As anyone who has met my father over the years would expect, he sold two kids bikes to Hendry (no, Hendry did not overpay) and scored Hendry's cell phone number out of it with the promise that if I ever wanted tickets, just ring him up. I think I went to the well about two times over the years, a game in San Francisco in late 2005 that I wrote about here and another in L.A. in 2006, which I believe was the infamous Derrek Lee wrist break game, although I went to two games that series and can't recall which one I paid for and which I didn't.
There's not much I can relate about my two brief phone calls with Hendry, the first was more enjoyable than the second as the meeting with my Dad was fresher in Hendry's mind. I just recall both times the cell reception being poor on his end and the sense of a man that had more important things to do. By the second call, the rules changed where you were taxed on giving away free tickets and he made it clear to me that was a bit of an issue if I wanted more than one game. Being a man that just prefers to pay his own way, I decided it best not to trouble him anymore after that point. There were many times that I considered how I'd approach him about doing an interview for TCR, but for various reasons that never happened and as time passed, I just presumed he wouldn't know who I am, nor can I be sure where the phone number is in my house.
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