The story Cubs people tell stars Brandon Hyde, is set hundreds of miles from Wrigley Field and years removed from glory. It is 2012, and the Cubs are bad. They've been bad for a while, and their poor play is precisely what Hyde, then a 39-year-old, first-time front-office member, was brought in to help fix.
A few months earlier, in one of his first moves as club president, Theo Epstein plucked Hyde from the Marlins and tasked him with a mission: Change the culture. Epstein would spend the next two years infusing talent into the Cubs' farm system, which Hyde soon oversaw as director of player development.