Ryne Sandberg gave Chicago a different kind of icon: Telander

CHICAGO - Ryne Sandberg was a great baseball player. Tall, smooth, swift, athletic, deftly powerful, he made playing second base look so easy that you figured you could do it.

Why would he ever make an error? He hardly ever did. From June 21, 1989, to May 17, 1990, he went 123 games without committing a single one for the Chicago Cubs. Five-hundred-eighty-four chances to screw up and nope. At the plate, it was the same smooth discipline combined with torque-generated strength and speed that let him hit 40 home runs one year and steal 54 bases another.

That was the thing about him with his grace and ease on the field--he was so fluid and serene that he was hard to fully appreciate. Great athletes always make what they do look easy. From gymnasts to quarterbacks, the best of the best have the movements, the mindset totally locked in, which frees them up to be creative and bold and great.

I’ve thought a lot about Sandberg in the past, and, like so many other baseball fans, I’m deeply saddened by his death from prostate cancer a week ago.

He loved the game so much — his triples (19 in 1984) and runs scored (eight years of 100 or more) showed how much he valued the art of getting as close to scoring as possible, of setting up his teammates to win games, to simply do the obvious: outscore the opponent. And, of course, we know about his defense and his astounding nine Gold Gloves and seven years of leading the league in assists.

But what I often thought about was how uncomfortable he was with being grilled by the media after games, even—nay, especially -- when it was he himself who had been the hero of a Cubs win. He didn’t like talking about himself. He didn’t like to brag. He didn’t want praise or wild adulation. And he didn’t need to analyze the game he had just played or explain baseball minutiae or tell jokes about teammates or simply revel in the splendor of his gifted existence. He was the locker room opposite of Pete Rose.

There were marriage issues, and when Sandberg first retired in the middle of the 1994 season, it was oddly premature, abrupt, and soon accompanied by an acrimonious divorce. He came back at age 36, with a new wife—his childhood friend and wonderful supporter, Margaret – and it seemed there was a new bounce of joy in his step. In fact, there was. As quiet and decent as Sandberg was, Margaret, with three kids of her own to add to Sandberg’s two, was the perfect amendment to his newly stable life.

I saw and spoke with Sandberg occasionally through the years. I remember being there when he said he was coming back to baseball in 1996 and noticing his good cheer. I was there when his statue was unveiled in front of Wrigley Field in June 2024. We talked easily then, and his smile was non-stop.

This was the man who wore number 23 at the same time the greatest basketball player in history did, right here in Chicago, Michael Jordan. It was such an honor to see such sports excellence during this period. Combined with Walter Payton, Andre Dawson, Frank Thomas, Denis Savard, Chris Chelios and, yes, even the dubious but energetic Sammy Sosa—the stage was lit with stardom here in the Chi.

But I knew how deep the emotions ran with Sandberg and baseball. A friend of mine told me about sitting behind Sandberg in a suburban movie theater when the deeply nostalgic "Field of Dreams" first ran. When the father meets the son on the Iowa ballfield in the midst of the corn stalks and swirling violins and asks the young man who is now younger than he, "Is this heaven?" Sandberg lost it completely. He sobbed so openly and loudly that some people thought he needed help.

If you watch the movie and truly imagine that Kevin Costner is now younger than his reincarnated father, played by Dwier Brown, and when he says to his ballplaying dad, "Is there a heaven?" and his dad replies so joyously, "Oh yeah. It’s the place where dreams come true," you too might be overwhelmed.

But Sandberg was gobsmacked. He was blown to pieces. I knew this, but I wasn’t completely certain why, and I called his phone and left a message last December asking him if he’d like to talk about his love of baseball and the meaning of that movie to him, after all these years. "Field of Dreams" came out in 1989, eight years before he retired for good. I wished he’d answered. But he had a reason not to.

He left a voice message for me, because, damn, I missed his return call. I was out shoveling snow or something. A pity. He’d already said he was excited to meet and talk.

"Hey Rick, Ryno here," he started. "It’s about 9:30 a.m. on this Friday. I know we’re set to meet at 11 o’clock. I got some heavy symptoms that set in in the middle of the night last night, persisting terribly this morning from the liquid radiation I’m getting."

He went on to explain that he was waiting to go to the Lake Forest Hospital emergency room for a pain IV.

"Right now I’m not feeling good at all – can’t get comfortable, waiting to hear what I should do going further. We’ll have to take some kind of rain check on this and see what we can do in the near future with us sitting down and talking."

He sounded very apologetic and asked me to please let him know that I got his voicemail, and I did. But that was the last I dealt with Ryno. He rallied and went to spring training with the Cubs, and I thought, ‘hey, there’s no hurry on this column I want to write, we’ll snag him later in the season.’ Then the cancer spread and it did its evil cancer thing.

I’m sorry I didn’t follow up with Ryno. It’s a regret I’ll carry. He was a good man. And baseball and family meant everything to him.

I can see his yard in my mind right now—down there at the end of the road amidst the trees and above Lake Michigan in a far north suburb, away from everything, peaceful as can be, with a small baseball diamond in the front yard. For his grandkids.

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