Craig Counsell says he left the Milwaukee Brewers to manage the Chicago Cubs this week because he wanted \"a new professional challenge.\"
Counsell, whose contract with the Brewers expired last month, signed a record-setting five-year, $40 million deal with the Cubs, according to sources.
\"I think as I was going through this process, it became clear that I needed and wanted a new professional challenge,\" Counsell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. \"At the same time, look, I\'m grateful to be part of [Milwaukee\'s] community. And that\'s going to continue, hopefully, because it has nothing to do with baseball, that part of it. I\'m looking forward to being part of a new community and hopefully impact our community well, too.
\"But as I went through it, it just became clear that I needed a new challenge.\"
Counsell had spent the past 17 seasons with the Brewers as a player, executive and manager.
He also dismissed the notion that his relationship with Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and members of the front office had become strained in recent years.
\"I think highly of Matt Arnold. I think highly of David Stearns. I think highly of Mark. Mark was incredibly graceful on our last phone call together. I don\'t have any hard feelings. They had to make a decision and I had to make a decision. That\'s it,\" Counsell said.
Via ESPN