Legendary baseball players have this amazing ability of seeming as if they remain active after the fact. There’s a writ-in-eternal-stone quality to their careers, which are akin to quests that never stop playing out.
For instance, as a boy who grew up an impassioned fan of Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg, I still expect his name to be announced as the National League’s starting second baseman in the All-Star Game each year, like there’s some part of the universe that decrees this must be so because it was so right for so long.
His passing has doubtless shaken not only Chicago sports fans, but also everyone who loved this ballplayer who was easy to love and talk about.
Word on my block was that such was Sandberg’s defensive acumen, that he never needed to dive for a ball. All grounders, regardless of how hard they were smashed, were potentially within his substantial remit. As long as Sandberg was Sandberg, they’d be plucked from atop the Wrigley dirt and tossed to first to quash the latest batter’s bid for an infield hit, with what always seemed like exactly half a step to spare.
Then there is the legend of the so-called Sandberg Game on June 23, 1984, in which the man who was known by then as Ryno clubbed two homers against the Cardinals’ fearsome Bruce Sutter — akin to David knocking Goliath on his rear end twice.
It simply wasn’t done.
But that was what I loved most about this player who has become underrated over the years. With a few exceptions — Bobby Doerr, Joe Gordon, Rogers Hornsby — second basemen weren’t guys who provided big-time pop. This is an unfamiliar concept to many now, when just about everyone in MLB is expected to swing for the fences. The days of slapping the ball the other way have come and gone, to say nothing of the drag bunt.
Sandberg was one of the game’s greatest boundless players. During his annus mirabilis season of 1984, Sandberg achieved something very few humans can claim: He was the best baseball player in the entire world. You thought of him as both the perfect second baseman and someone who transcended the concept of position. As Hank Aaron was a ballplayer above all else, so was Sandberg. Baseball incarnate.
People focus on WAR (wins above replacement) stats now. They’ll tell you that Detroit’s Lou Whitaker was every bit the player Sandberg was. This is foolish. Sandberg kept doing things that you didn’t think were possible.
It’s never talked about now, but it has always blown my mind how Sandberg led the National League in home runs with 40 in 1990. I consider it one of the coolest achievements in baseball history. Barry Bonds was in the league, and this second sacker took the four-bagger crown?
Thus, 1984 might not have even been Sandberg’s best year. He surprised you because you kept finding that he had more to give with his game.
The best players in baseball — just like the best of us in life — don’t get hemmed in. New skills are found, and older skills are further developed. We learn that we can do this thing we hadn’t considered. Doubt is replaced by confidence.
Despite their torturous history, one never thought of the Cubs as prosaic. Un-fun. Boring. Someone like Sandberg — as with Ernie Banks before him — was a top reason why.
In a world where we’re increasingly fixated on having a niche — imprisoning ourselves within increasingly narrower mental prison cells — Sandberg the ballplayer basically said, “Nah, that’s not for me. I’m gonna expand.” The message was every bit as inspiring as his game.
I recall thinking, “What else can this guy do?” That became: “What can’t Sandberg do?”
I’ve always loved thinking about his brand of highly efficient, poetry-in-motion baseball. He was the John Keats of the two-hole who authored a Wrigley-based pastoral in just the right number of words.
To this day, I’ll scour his numbers, taken aback by what they still tell me about this unique player who was also uniquely inspiring. Among the most powerful things in the world is when someone causes us to say, “I can’t believe they did that,” in a manner that causes us to reevaluate what we may also be able to do.
If that’s who you are, death has no better chance of dimming your legacy and lesson than the mighty Sutter had of sending Ryno back to the bench on that gloriously eternal summer’s day in 1984. And it’s not like a dive is required to reach that conclusion.
Colin Fleming is the author of “Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963,” More Top Picks Duvet Cover
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