Sandberg: A trade, a game, a daily statement

The man who helped modernize the Cubs passes away at 65.

Ryne Sandberg’s latest, and last, trick was to be a grandpa, eight times over. How could that be? Sandberg was always 25 or so, with that perfect smile and that simple innocence and those Fred Astaire feet. He was always the kid who got picked first, no matter the sport, no matter the town. He was too young to have all those tykes gathered on the floor. He was also too young to leave us, but he did, on Monday, a 65-year-old who, more than anyone else, turned Wrigley Field from a sleepy artifact into Chicago’s town hall.

Sometimes we want our athletes to grunt and groan and agonize to be great, the way we would. But we also like it when they turn the extraordinary into the routine, when they make all the plays and get all the big hits and do it without smudging a single pinstripe. Nothing seemed to muss up Sandberg, not the 1-for-32 beginning to his Cubs’ career, not the losses that kept him from gracing a World Series, not the frenzied love that greeted him at every home game. Sandberg was named after Ryne Duren, the fireballing and half-blind Yankee reliever, and veteran major league reliever Ryne Stanek was named after Sandberg. He came to town wanting No. 14 and was told that, no, Ernie Banks owned that one. He settled for No. 23, two years before Michael Jordan wore it in Chicago.

In truth, Sandberg got nicked up like everyone else. He left the Cubs after 57 games in 1994, only 34, supposedly fed up with management and the trades that had broken up the playoff teams of the 80s. Actually it was because he and his wife Cindy, his high school sweetheart from Spokane, were getting a divorce that would morph into a hostile custody battle. He came back in 1996 and hit 25 home runs, played one more year, and left for good.

Later he would manage the Phillies, his original team, after he had obeyed custom and done his time in minor league dugouts. They were in decline, and Sandberg got tired of the unhappiness and me-first attitudes around him, and was fired after fewer than two seasons, with a .428 winning percentage.

Not many people knew what lay behind the smile. With the Phillies, Sandberg said he didn’t like the team’s chemistry, and that the young players didn’t show up with the same respect that he’d shown when the Phillies had called him up as a courtesy, and he got to meet Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt. In his Hall of Fame induction speech 10 years ago, Sandberg said that learning how to bunt and turn double plays is “more important than knowing where to find the little red light on the dugout camera.” In truth, he wasn’t cut out to teach a game that had come so natural. Most great players aren’t.

If he harbored any of those curmudgeonly thoughts on the way to becoming the highest-paid player in baseball, he hid them effectively, along with most other opinions and emotions.

He had back-to-back 100 RBI seasons even though he primarily batted second, he launched 40 home runs in 1990, and he won nine consecutive Gold Gloves and had MVP votes in six different seasons, including the trophy in 1984, when he had 200 hits and 19 triples. “To this day, at least once a week, we wonder how he had so many triples in Wrigley Field,” said current Cubs manager Craig Counsell. Sandberg was a master facilitator for leadoff man Bob Dernier in those days, and Harry Caray called them “the daily double.”

But the raw stats didn’t get Sandberg to Cooperstown or make his autograph so valuable. He was important because he was the lead actor on the teams that tore down and rebuilt the Cubs franchise, which had not played a postseason game since 1945 and had not had a winning season since 1972. The 1984 team, which blew an 0-2 lead in the NLCS to San Diego, was the first ever to draw 2 million in Wrigley. Twelve Cubs teams have drawn over three million since. WGN beamed Sandberg, and Caray, across the country. Daily viewers didn’t know if the Cubs would win, but at least they were no longer surprised. They also knew Sandberg would never change.

One Saturday afternoon made him Chicago’s Beatle.

It was June 23, 1984, with the Cardinals in Wrigley. The Cubs trailed, 9-3, in the bottom of the sixth, but Sandberg capped a rally with a 2-run single that made it 9-8. That was his drum roll. In the ninth Sandberg pounded a game-tying home run off Bruce Sutter, the league’s best closer. In the 10th, with two out and trailing 11-9 and with NBC’s Bob Costas telling everyone that the executive producer was Michael Weisman and the consulting director was Harry Coyle, Sandberg took Sutter to the bridge again and tied it 11-11. As one Cub fan said, “People were hugging people they didn’t even know.”

You get a summer’s worth of pints at the Wrigleyville Tap if you remember that Dave Owen had the game-winning hit for the Cubs in the 11th.

Sandberg went 5-for-6 with seven RBIs. He was barely the most influential player on the field, since the Cardinals’ Willie McGee hit for the cycle, went 4-for-5 and drove in six, but it became known immediately as The Sandberg Game, the easy answer to any word-association test.

In the visitors’ clubhouse, a combative Whitey Herzog was asked to assess Sandberg’s day. “He’s Baby Fucking Ruth, best player I ever saw,” said Herzog, in a quote that seemed idolatrous to those who didn’t hear it.

Sutter had 45 saves in 1984 and gave up only seven other home runs in 122 and two-thirds innings. He said his own grandkids saw the tape and thought they caught him saying a “bad word. I said, no, I was saying, ‘Duck.’’’

What’s forgotten is the Sandberg Game only left the Cubs in third place. They went 59-34 the rest of the year to win the old National League East.

Sandberg’s other claim to fame is that he was a “throw-in” when the Phillies and Cubs made that 1982 trade. Dallas Green had been the Phillies’ farm director and knew Sandberg as an athletic shortstop. Then he became the manager of the Phillies’ first world championship team and the Cubs hired him to rewire their team in 1982. Among many alterations was the acquisition of Larry Bowa, one of the surer defensive shortstops in modern history. The Cubs gave Philadelphia their own shortstop, Ivan DeJesus, but advisor Gordon Goldsberry told Green not to make the deal unless they got Sandberg, too.

Actually a lot of teams wanted Sandberg, but more of them wanted Julio Franco, another minor league shortstop, who would amass 2,586 hits and play until he was 48. But Sandberg would always be known as the player who was Famed later. He started out at third base but blossomed when the Cubs moved him to second.

After two years the Cubs weren’t exactly displeased with Sandberg, who had become a reliable line-driver, but new manager Jim Frey wanted more. “Have you ever thought about hitting home runs?” he asked him, in typical sandpaper fashion. Sandberg said he had not. “No one had ever asked me before,” he said. With Frey’s help he learned to swing quicker at inside pitches, and wound up with 282 homers, a record for second basemen at the time.

Athletes can do things like that. Sandberg nearly took a scholarship offer to play quarterback at Washington State. He threw 12 touchdowns and two interceptions for North Central High, and he averaged 13.3 points on the hoop team, could dunk lefthanded, and played high school rival John Stockton to a standstill.

Not everyone thought baseball would be Sandberg’s workplace. But Bill Harper, the Phillies’ scout, saw the speed. He had Sandberg run the 60 in the outfield grass and timed him at 6.3. He blinked at that and asked Sandberg to do it again. This time it was 6.5. Sold.

The Phillies drafted Sandberg in the 20th round. Harper and fellow scout Moose Johnson came to the house and signed him for $25,000. The problem was that Green, the farm director, had told him he had $20K to work with. And it was midnight in Spokane, 3 a.m. in Philly.

As Spokane Spokesman-Review columnist John Blanchette reported it, Harper called and woke up Green, who grumbled and barked and finally said, “He better be a good player, Bill.” Harper kept his job, the Phillies didn’t keep Sandberg, and a tired old ballpark became forever young, just like its re-inventor.