Last November, Kyle Hendricks announced his retirement following a 12-year career that saw him play an integral role in bringing a World Series title to the Chicago Cubs for the first time in 108 years. After finishing seventh in the Rookie of the Year voting in 2014, when he posted a 2.46 ERA, Hendricks was one of the best pitchers in baseball as the Cubs marched to the 2016 World Series title. That year, he was 16-8 with an MLB-best 2.13 ERA and finished third in the National League Cy Young Award voting behind Max Scherzer of the Washington Nationals and Cubs teammate Jon Lester. In the playoffs, he outpitched Clayton Kershaw in the pennant-winning game against the Los Angeles Dodgers—the Cubs’ first since 1945. Hendricks threw 7 1/3 shutout innings, giving up just two hits while striking out six and walking none. In the World Series, he started the decisive Game 7, which the Cubs won in 10 innings. In that series, his 1.00 ERA was the best of any starting pitcher on either team.
Hendricks, who turned 36 in December, spoke to DAM about career highlights and what’s next.
Could you talk a little about how your College career helped your big league career?
When I started playing minor league baseball, I was just way ahead of where I needed to be and felt really set up to take all that on, what it meant to be a professional. And that was because of the things I had gone through at Dartmouth, through the baseball program with Coach [Bob] Whalen, and through the school and the great professors.
In 2016, you were arguably the best pitcher in the game and played a key role in getting the Cubs their first championship in 108 years. Can you describe the feeling when third baseman Kris Bryant threw to first baseman Anthony Rizzo for the last out?
After I came out of the game, I was a nervous wreck—more so than when I was pitching. I turned into a true fan. At that final moment, you see Kris slip a little bit after he gets the ball in his glove. You have a thought, you’re like, oh no—with everything that’s happened with the history of the Cubs—and all of a sudden you just see the ball go into Rizzo’s glove at first, and it’s pure elation. Realizing what you’ve accomplished, running out on that field, you are transformed back to a small child, you’re a kid again playing Little League with your best friends and you’re running out and it’s the time of your life. And what it meant for this fan base—Cubs fans are so diehard, so loyal no matter what. I know as a group we were able to all buy into that wholeheartedly, and it helped us keep pushing on that emotional roller coaster.
You mention you were a nervous wreck—yet you were a stoic presence on the mound throughout your career. Were you a little more nervous than you let on?
It was something I had to work on in my game. I wasn’t going to be a hard thrower, so I had to change speeds, read hitters—the mental side of the game—and slow things down, work on breathing. Off the field, man, I’m completely different than I am on the field, and people get surprised by that. I’m just smiling, happy, talking way more than you would think. It’s just my alter ego on the mound.
How frustrating was it for you and your teammates not to be able to repeat as World Series champs?
We would have loved to give the Cubs fans another championship. But at the end of the day, I think the perspective we’ve gained as the years have gone by is it showed us how difficult it is to accomplish that, to get to the top of the mountain, to win at the top of your sport.
Theo Epstein made one of the great trades in acquiring you from the Texas Rangers. Given that he went to Yale, did you ever talk about your shared Ivy League experience?
Yeah, we’ve talked about that a lot, his experiences at Yale, how it set him up. He had a different upbringing, he came from the East Coast, I came from California. We talked about everything we experienced—the classes, the professors, being on campus, student life—all those things about how special both of those places are.
What’s your next chapter?
I’m really excited to not know. I feel so lucky and grateful for the time I got, not just in the major leagues but also to play for 11 seasons in Chicago. I can step back, get some traveling in, spend a summer at the lake, spend a lot of time with my 2-year-old boy and my wife, and, I hope, grow our family.
Frederic J. Frommer, a sports and politics historian who has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, is working on a book on ’70s baseball.
