John Blanchette

July 31, 2005

The professional career that crests today in a shrine – the Baseball Hall of Fame – began in a garage. In between, of course, were 141/2 major league seasons during which Ryne Sandberg established himself as the best second baseman of his generation, won an out-of-nowhere MVP award, became a home run champion and bathed in the fanaticism – and the frustration – endemic to the Chicago Cubs. But the start couldn't have been more humble, like most baseball fairy tales.

The garage was Sandberg's address in Helena, Mont., the summer after high school graduation when he'd been drafted and signed by the Philadelphia Phillies and dispatched to their rookie-level team in the Pioneer League.

Sandberg completes a double play as Atlanta Braves Tommy Gregg slides into second base in Chicago in this Aug. 19, 1990, photo. Sandberg's solid play at second base earned him nine Gold Gloves. (Associated Press)

"It wasn't much," acknowledged Sandberg. "There was a bed in there, but it was a garage. I walked two miles each way to the ballpark and back, coming back at 11 at night. I was trying to get by on $500 a month and I'm 18 years old and didn't know anything.

"A third of the team was Latin players who didn't speak English – and all these guys had tools. It wasn't North Central anymore, or Legion ball."

That left Sandberg to make his typical impression.

"He didn't say anything for two months," Bobby Dernier, a teammate in Helena and later with the Cubs, was once quoted as saying. "I thought he was a Spanish player."

But he also did enough on the field in 1978 – hitting .311 and leading Pioneer shortstops in double plays – to jump-start a brisk, four-year ascent through the Phillies chain. Still, that's a long way from Wrigley Field, 10 All-Star appearances and iconic status both in Chicago and back home in Spokane thanks to the cable reach of WGN.

Ryne Sandberg's march to the Hall of Fame was a product both of good timing, good influences and his own single-mindedness – and it happened despite his disdain for celebrity or anything, outside of a home run or a deftly turned double play, that might call attention to himself.

"He was professional and he believed in doing things in a professional way," said Dallas Green, briefly his manager in Philadelphia and the man responsible for bringing him to Chicago. "He absorbed everything, didn't assume there would be any shortcuts and he was a team guy.

"Sometimes that hurt him because he didn't get the acclaim he should have. He didn't have great charisma. He was just solid, aggressive – and, of course, he had great ability."

But ability needs opportunity.

He did get a September call-up with the Phillies in 1981 and was assigned to a locker next to his childhood idol, Pete Rose.

Who lockered on his other side?

"Does it matter?" Sandberg laughed.

But the Phillies were a veteran team just a year removed from a World Championship. There was no room for in the infield for Sandberg and just enough doubt about his prospects among the development staff. Of course, Sandberg's real champions in the Phillies hierarchy were Green and Gordon Goldsberry, the farm director, and after 1981 both took jobs with the Cubs, Green as the general manager.

Which made it fairly predictable that when the two teams swapped shortstops Larry Bowa and Ivan DeJesus in January 1982, Green insisted that Sandberg be included in the package.

"Sure, I was upset – a lot of my buddies were in the Phillies organization and we'd all dreamed about playing at Veterans Stadium," Sandberg said. "But it was obviously a turning point in my career because I got to play every day at the age of 22 and that opportunity just doesn't happen to every player."

How that was going to happen in Chicago wasn't immediately clear – Sandberg was a shortstop and Bowa was still very much ahead of him.

"But we made an opening for him at third base and started him there," said Green. "We'd drafted a shortstop, Shawon Dunston, coming up behind Bowa. Then the next year, we had a chance to get Ronnie Cey as a free agent so we asked Ryno if he would move to second base, and with his work ethic and Larry Bowa's help, he made a quick adjustment to the position."

He didn't just adjust. He made the position his own for the next 12 years.

Not that there weren't hiccups – from the moment he walked into the Cubs' clubhouse. The first thing Sandberg did upon seeing a uniform with the number 23 hanging in his locker was ask clubhouse man Yosh Kawano for 14, his old NC number.

Kawano was not amused.

"I had no clue," Sandberg said, "that had been Ernie Banks' number."

Then he went zero for his first 20 at bats as a Cub, and 1-for-32. At that rate, Sandberg was never going to replace Banks as Mr. Cub – and, in fact, was turning into a basket case reading those stats in the newspapers and fretting that he'd be sent down to Triple-A. But the truth is, the '82 Cubs were a club without much expectation – and hadn't left themselves many options other than Sandberg, who at least was playing sensational defense.

For a youngster who gave the impression of being almost obsessive about finding a comfort zone, Sandberg had been buried in change by the Cubs – starting as a rookie, a new position and then another position switch to second.

The next change would put him in the Hall of Fame.

Jim Frey became manager of the Cubs in 1984, and quickly sized up Sandberg as something more than a good glove/good speed/good contact guy. In spring training, he took Sandberg aside and insisted he start thinking of himself as "the big guy" in the lineup – looking for a middle-in fastball in a hitter's count, 2-0 or 3-1, and pulling it for power.

And he didn't just talk about it.

"He walked me down to the batting cages and taught me how to pull the ball," Sandberg remembered. "Here's the manager of the team and he's soft-tossing to me at 8 in the morning. He had that insight and then he took the time to work with me."

Although, according to Frey, it didn't take much time.

"I worked with a lot of gifted hitters," said Frey. "Most of them didn't get it. He not only got it, he got it right now."

"Right now" turned into Sandberg's MVP season – a .314 batting average, 19 home runs, 19 triples, 32 stolen bases, another in his string of nine Gold Gloves. The defining moment, for both the player and his fans, was on June 23, when the Cubs fell behind St. Louis 7-1 but rallied to trail 9-8 in ninth. Sandberg, who already had three hits, faced Bruce Sutter, baseball's best closer, with two out and drilled a home run to send the game into extra innings.

St. Louis struck back with two in the top of the 10th and Sutter returned to close it out again – only to walk Dernier with two outs. Again Sandberg connected to tie the game, and Dave Owen won it for the Cubs 12-11 with a single in the 11th.

This was the day St. Louis manager Whitey Herzog called Sandberg "Baby Ruth" and proclaimed him to be "the best player I've ever seen."

It was the game that made Ryne Sandberg "Ryno" – OK, Harry Caray did it, too – and served as the fulcrum for the Cubs sweeping to the National League East championship and making their first post-season appearance in 39 years. That they blew a 2-0 series lead to San Diego and didn't play in the World Series stung, to be sure, but at age 25, Sandberg figured "we'd be going to the Series four or five years in a row."

By August 1985, all five of the Cubs' starting pitchers – Rick Sutcliffe, Steve Trout, Dick Ruthven, Dennis Eckersley and Scott Sanderson – were on the disabled list at the same time. The Cubs finished 23 1/2 games out and Sandberg discovered "how things can happen in the major leagues."

Especially with the Cubs.

It would be five years before the club would contend again – winning the East but managing just one victory in the NLCS against San Francisco. Only three times in Sandberg's career did the Cubs finish above .500. Twelve different managers shuffled through the Wrigley clubhouse. Veteran teams got too old quickly. Promising young teams were undone by poor personnel decisions. Greg Maddux got away, Rafael Palmeiro was traded. Green's steady hand was subverted by ownership and he was dismissed, and the losing took its toll – though it took a strike in 1994 to slow the turnstiles at Wrigley.

The one thing they never screwed up – at least not for several years – was Ryne Sandberg. Green had signed him to a six-year contract before his MVP season in '84; Frey, the GM in 1989, extended him for three years at $6.3 million. And in 1992, Sandberg landed a $28.4 million contract that would take him through 1997, at the time the richest in baseball.

By the game's standards, he was worth it.

"Ryno is the best second baseman of my time," Dunston said. "He played every day, he produced, he played hurt and didn't complain, he played when he was slumping and didn't beg off."

And he was earning slugger's money because he'd become a slugger. In a four-year span he hit 122 home runs, more than he'd hit in the previous seven and the stretch that would allow him to pass Joe Morgan's record for most homers by a second baseman. In 1990, he led the N.L. with 40 home runs – the first at his position to do so since Rogers Hornsby in 1925.

"That season, Bobby Bonilla and Daryl Strawberry were right behind me the last two months," Sandberg said, "and they'd get to second base and look at me and ask, 'Where are you getting all that power?' I was still considered a 'little guy.' But it's one of those things you just don't envision.

"It's like the time I was the batting champion in Legion back in Spokane. My mom read that in the paper and there was a picture and I remember her saying, 'That never happens in our family.' "

But a combination of factors began to sap Sandberg's enthusiasm. The losing. The clueless regime of general manager Larry Himes, who Sandberg uncharacteristically blistered in his autobiography "Second to Home." What he sensed as a growing indifference in the next generation of players.

And, finally, his crumbling marriage with his high school sweetheart, Cindy.

When he shockingly pulled the plug on his career June 11, 1994, he cited his unwillingness to keep taking the Cubs' money when his want-to was drained, and an overriding desire to spend more time with his children. Both were true, but it wasn't the whole story.

And which is why, after his divorce and a remarriage to neighborhood friend Margaret Koehnemann, his spirit felt repaired enough to return to the game for the 1996 season.

He lasted just two years, and he wasn't the player he'd been – he was even benched briefly in 1997 – but he was an obviously happier soul and when he left the game for good, he did it on his terms.

"I didn't want him to retire again," Margaret admitted. "I tried to talk him out of it."

This time, there was a proper sendoff – the Cubs gave him a red Corvette, among other gifts – and the clock began ticking in earnest on his Hall of Fame eligibility.

And when he was elected this past January, on his third try, he had an odd revelation:

"I loved being on the field," he said. "I didn't like distractions. I felt like I always wanted to go out and play well, and I didn't know if I was going to play well each and every day – I had a little fear, which I think is a good fear, butterflies before every game.

"Now, looking back, if I knew this was a guarantee, I probably would have had a ball."