Red Sox principal owner John W. Henry would not say Friday whether he has granted the Cubs permission to speak with Theo Epstein. He did, however, not rule out Epstein's departure as the team's general manager at some point in time. "I think there's a certain shelf life in these jobs," Henry said during an appearance on "The Dennis and Callahan Show" on WEEI in Boston. "You can only be the general manager if you're sane. You can only be the manager for a certain amount of time. It's a tremendous pressure cooker here, 162 games. It's a long season, and the pressure here is 365 days. "So Theo is not going to be the general manager forever. Just as if Tito (Francona) had come back for the last two years, would he have gone past 10 years? I can't imagine that he would have. I think that Theo will. He's the guy now, he's been the guy, we've had tremendous success. "We fell apart at the end of the season. As Larry expressed, we're upset about it. No fan could be more upset than I am about the result this year. But he's done a tremendous job for us over the last eight years."