Perfection in Cleats: Ryne Sandberg (1959-2025)

At the outset of Sunday’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown, chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark invoked the words of 2005 honoree Ryne Sandberg, who was not among the 52 returning Hall of Famers onstage for the festivities:

“As I have said many times before, the National Baseball Hall of Fame is an extraordinary place, and no one has described our game and what the Hall of Fame means better than Ryne Sandberg, Chicago Cubs legend and member of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2005,” began Clark. “During his induction speech, he said, ‘The reason I am here, they tell me, is that I played the game a certain way, that I played the game the way it was supposed to be played. I don’t know about that, but I do know this: I had too much respect for the game to play it any other way. And if there is a single reason I am here today, it is because of one word: Respect.'”

As she continued, Clark’s voice audibly cracked, but she pushed through. “There is not a man seated behind me this afternoon who didn’t play the game the same way Ryno did. It is that respect, character, sportsmanship, integrity, and excellence that leads to just one percent of those that have ever played major league baseball to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.”

Her message — which referenced the Hall’s own voting rules, the so-called “character clause” — was evergreen, but the absence of Sandberg, who had attended the last two induction ceremonies, was conspicuous. So was Clark’s display of emotion, and now we know why. Sandberg, who was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in January 2024, died on Monday at age 65.

Sandberg spent all but 13 games of a 16-year major league career with the Cubs, who acquired him and longtime shortstop Larry Bowa from the Phillies in a January 27, 1982 trade for Ivan De Jesus. Combining rare power for a second baseman with excellent range and outstanding hands, he made 10 consecutive All-Star teams from 1984–93 (all but 1985 as a starter), and won nine straight Gold Gold Gloves from ’83–91; he also set records for second basemen with 123 consecutive errorless games and 584 consecutive errorless chances in ’89–90. In 1984, his age-24 season, he broke out to collect 200 hits and lead the National League with 8.5 WAR (all WAR figures here refer to the Baseball Reference version). The Cubs won 96 games and the NL East title that year, reaching the postseason for the first time in 39 years, and although they suffered an agonizing loss to the Padres in a classic five-game National League Championship Series, after the season he took home the NL MVP award. Despite a public persona so understated that one Chicago writer referred to him as having the personality “of a Chia Pet,” he emerged as the face of the franchise, and one of the most popular players in the game. No less an authority than future Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog called him “the best baseball player I’ve ever seen” after Sandberg hit game-tying homers in the ninth and 10th innings off another future Hall of Famer, Bruce Sutter, in a nationally televised game on June 23, 1984, to cap a 5-for-6, seven-RBI performance, which quickly became known as “The Ryne Sandberg Game.”

“Ryne Sandberg was, however briefly, the face of the game,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle sports editor Christina Kahrl, a Chicago resident during the second baseman’s prime and later a co-founder of Baseball Prospectus. “Few can make that claim at any point of their career, but for a moment, a moment such as only sports can deliver and only a devoted fan base can cherish, he was perfection in cleats.”

In 1989, Sandberg hit 30 home runs while helping the Cubs to another NL East flag, and the following season, he led the league in both total bases (344) and homers (40). The latter accomplishment made him the first second baseman to lead a league since Rogers Hornsby in 1925, as well as the first with at least 30 homers in back-to-back seasons.

Sandberg retired abruptly in June 1994 when he was just 34 years old. “I lost the edge that it takes to play — the drive, the motivation, the killer instinct,” he said at the time. He forfeited more than $15 million in remaining salary. Later he revealed he was unhappy with the Cubs front office, and shortly after his retirement, his wife Cindy filed for divorce. He sat out the rest of the 1994 season (which was interrupted by a players strike in August) and all of ’95, but returned to the Cubs for the ’96 and ’97 seasons. On April 26, 1997, he hit his 267th home run as a second baseman, breaking Joe Morgan’s career record. He retired with 277 at the position and 282 overall; Jeff Kent surpassed his positional record on October 2, 2004, and finished his career with 351 at the position.

For his career, Sandberg hit .285/.344/.452 (114 OPS+), finishing with 2,386 hits and 344 stolen bases. While he never reached the 30-homer, 30-steal plateau, he had at least 20 of each in 1985, ’90, and ’91. Both his 68.0 WAR and 57.6 JAWS rank 11th all time among second basemen. He was elected to the Hall of Fame on his third try, in 2005, as part of a two-man class alongside Wade Boggs. In 2007, he began a six-year run as a minor league manager in the Cubs and Phillies organizations, and in August 2013, after four and a half months as the Phillies third base coach, he took over for fired manager Charlie Manuel. His tenure didn’t go well, lasting less than two full years before he resigned.

Sandberg’s popularity was fueled by WGN, a local television superstation with national reach thanks to the increasing popularity of cable. Because Wrigley Field did not get lights until 1988, the Cubs were the only baseball team on TV during the day for the first six years of his career in Chicago — a point when the team was starved for success given that it had maxed out at 81 wins from 1973–83. “He was a superhero in this city,” Jed Hoyer, Cubs president of baseball operations, said during a recent broadcast. “You think about [Michael] Jordan, Walter Payton and Ryne Sandberg all here at the same time, and I can’t imagine a person handling their fame better, their responsibility for a city better than he did.”

“Ryne Sandberg was a hero to a generation of Chicago Cubs fans and will be remembered as one of the all-time greats in nearly 150 years of this historic franchise,” said Cubs executive chairman Tom Ricketts. “His dedication and respect for the game, along with unrelenting integrity, grit, hustle, and competitive fire were hallmarks of his career.”

Ryne Dee Sandberg was born on September 18, 1959, in Spokane, Washington, the youngest of four children to Derwent Sandberg (“Sandy”), a mortician, and Elizabeth Barter Sandberg (“Libby”), a registered nurse. Sandy and Libby were avid baseball fans, and named their second and fourth children after ballplayers: Del (after former Phillies slugger Del Ennis) and Ryne (after Yankees pitcher Ryne Duren). Five years older than Ryne, Del served as a mentor and coach to his younger brother. “It was kind of hard when he got a girlfriend in high school,” Ryne told People in 1984. “I always would get mad because he would go out on a date and I wanted to play ball.”

At North Central High School, Sandberg was a three-sport star. As a quarterback and punter, he earned All-American honors from Parade and set a Greater Spokane League passing yardage record that was eventually broken by future NFL quarterback Mark Rypien. As a 6-foot-2 forward, he earned all-city honors twice and played against future Basketball Hall of Famer John Stockton. He was a two-time all-city selection in baseball as an infielder, hitting .417 with four homers and leading his 25-3 team to the state championship game in 1978. Though he showed off dazzling speed (6.3 seconds in the 60-yard dash) for scouts, most of them preferred the team’s catcher, Chris Henry, who would be drafted in the 10th round by the Mariners in 1979 and spend three seasons in professional baseball. Phillies Northwest scout Bill Harper was an exception. “I’ve dreamed of signing a kid like this. He can do it all,” Harper told NC High coach Ken Eilmes.

College football powerhouses Oklahoma and Nebraska recruited Sandberg as a quarterback. He eventually signed a letter of intent to play at Washington State, so most major league teams viewed him as unsignable because of that commitment and didn’t send scouts to see him. “What helped us was that the Major League Scouting Bureau had him as being worth just $4,000 and unsignable at that value,” recalled Phillies crosschecker Wilbur “Moose” Johnson in Baseball America’s Ultimate Draft Book. The Phillies saw such hard-to-sign players as opportunities, so Harper and Johnson persuaded director of scouting Dallas Green to draft Sandberg. The team chose him in the 20th round as a shortstop in 1978 and negotiated for him to forgo his football career by signing him for a $25,000 bonus, about $20,000 more than the going rate for a pick that low. Harper and Johnson argued over which of them should call the hot-tempered Green. “I’m thinking, ‘There goes my job and maybe Moose’s too,” Harper told the Spokane Spokesman-Review’s John Blanchette in 2005. Green went silent for a long moment before finally telling Harper, “You know what, Bill? He better be able to play.”

“I had no ambition to go to college and study,” Sandberg confessed to Sports Illustrated’s Steve Rushin in 1992. “When the Phillies made an offer, it made my decision easier. I wanted to get into the minor leagues young, work at the game, learn how it worked, and maybe, someday, make an appearance in the majors… I never dreamed of [stardom].”

Sandberg began his minor league career with Helena in the Rookie-level Pioneer League, where he hit .311/.390/.421 with one homer and 15 steals. Though he struggled offensively at A-level Spartanburg the next year, he hit .310/.403/.469 with 11 homers and 32 steals for Double-A Reading as a 20-year-old in 1980, making the Eastern League All-Star team, and followed up with a .293/.352/.397 line for Triple-A Oklahoma City in 1981; while he played 117 games at shortstop, he also spent 17 at second base, a position where he previously had no professional experience. The Phillies, who won the NL East’s first-half title, called him up in September, using him mainly as as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement. He didn’t start a single game, and didn’t even get to bat until his fifth game on September 11, 1981. (The Pirates’ Kent Tekulve struck him out.) In the nightcap of a September 27 doubleheader against the Cubs, a game that the Phillies would lose 14-0, Sandberg collected his first major league hit, an eighth-inning single off Mike Krukow, his lone hit in six at-bats during his cup of coffee.

After the 1981 season, Green left the Phillies to become executive vice president and general manager of the Cubs. In addition to hiring coaches and scouts away from his old team, he acquired outfielder Keith Moreland and pitcher Dickie Noles, both of whom he’d drafted, in December. Then, in January, Green swung another trade to get Bowa after his extension talks with the Phillies had broken down, in exchange for De Jesus. Green convinced Philadelphia to throw Sandberg into the swap of shortstops despite Bowa’s having been much more valuable than De Jesus in 1981 (1.8 WAR vs. -1.3). “Everyone in our organization looked at [Sandberg] as a utilityman in the majors,” said Phillies general manager Paul Owens in 1984. With Sandberg’s inclusion, the trade turned out to be one of the era’s most lopsided.

The Cubs, who had gone 38-63 during the strike-torn season while playing three sub-replacement level infielders (second baseman Pat Tabler and third baseman Ken Reitz as well as De Jesus), opened 1982 with Sandberg at third base next to Bowa, with Bump Wills at second. Sandberg began the season in a 1-for-32 funk, but Green and manager Lee Elia stuck with him. “A slump like that would’ve crushed a lot of young players, but we knew with his inner strength that it wouldn’t crush him,” Green told Sports Illustrated’s Douglas S. Looney in 1984.

Sandberg hit his first two major league homers on April 16 against the Pirates, a fourth-inning two-run shot off Eddie Solomon and a solo homer off Paul Moskau in the sixth. He didn’t hit another one until June 30, and ended the season with just seven to go with a .271/.312/.372 (90 OPS+) line, which he augmented with 32 steals. A September move to second base went well; between his excellent baserunning and defense (six runs above average between the two positions), his season was worth 3.1 WAR. With Wills a free agent, the Cubs decided to make Sandberg’s move to second permanent; Green traded for longtime Dodgers third baseman Ron Cey to fill the gap. Sandberg’s offensive contributions in 1983 were modest (.261/.316/.351, 82 OPS+) save for his 37 steals, but he was 13 runs above average at second and claimed his first Gold Glove.

Elia — whose tenure at the helm was so frustrating that it is mainly remembered for an infamous, off-color tirade — got the axe in late 1983 and was replaced by Jim Frey the following year. The new manager challenged Sandberg, who had just signed a six-year, $3.97 million contract, to hit for power. “He seemed to view himself as a hit-and-run player — advance the runner, keep an inning going. I felt he was capable of much more,” Frey told Looney. Sandberg said the manager told him, “You have the speed and ability to hit 35 to 40 doubles a year, eight to 10 triples and, in time, to begin hitting some home runs. You look like you’re just trying to meet the ball, and I think you can drive the ball.”

Sandberg homered twice in the first week of the 1984 season, and while he didn’t hit his third until the team’s 38th game, by that point he was batting .325/.382/.519 — and the Cubs were 17-9. On June 23, in an NBC Game of the Week against the Cardinals, he catapulted to national prominence with The Sandberg Game. The Cubs had trailed 9-3 after the top of the sixth, but Sandberg capped a five-run rally with a two-run single off Neil Allen in the bottom of the frame, his third hit and third RBI of the day, though he was thrown out trying to stretch the hit into a double. He led off the ninth with a game-tying solo homer off Sutter, and after the Cardinals scored twice in the top of the 10th, he tied things up with a two-run shot off Sutter in the home half. Chicago went on to win 12-11 in 11 innings.

It was the Cubs’ year — and Sandberg’s. Though they were in and out of first place through the first four months, the Cubs pulled ahead of the Mets for good with a 20-10 August and won the NL East — for the first time since the advent of division play in 1969 — by 6 1/2 games. Sandberg hit .314/.367/.520 and led the league with 114 runs scored and 19 triples to go with his 19 homers and 32 steals. His 8.5 WAR was more than a full win ahead of second-ranked Gary Carter, and he received 22 out of 24 first-place votes for MVP. In the NLCS against the Padres, Sandberg collected two hits in each of the first two games as the Cubs moved to within a win of their first World Series appearance since 1945. While he hit safely in the other three games, the Padres stormed back to win the series.

In his season-ending wrap-up for GQ (collected in The Heart of the Order) Thomas Boswell wrote, “Sandberg looks like a full-blooming Natural… He just has the gift, or it has him… George Brett tells Sandberg, ‘I watch you every afternoon on cable TV. You’re my idol.’”

Though the Cubs backslid to 77 wins in 1985, Sandberg hit .305/.364/.504 (132 OPS+) while setting new career highs with 26 home runs and 54 stolen bases; it was only the third 25-50 season to that point; to date there have been just 15, four of them in the past two seasons. His 5.9 WAR was good for seventh in the league, but he couldn’t maintain that level; over the next three seasons, Sandberg hit a combined .280/.338/.423 (105 OPS+) while averaging 16 homers, 27 steals, and 3.5 WAR. The Cubs continued to meander in 70-something win territory, finishing no higher than fourth. Frey was fired two months into the 1986 season, though after spending the ’87 season in the WGN broadcast booth, he replaced Green as the team’s top baseball executive, with the title of director of baseball operations.

Things came together again for Sandberg and the Cubs in 1989, starting with a new three-year, $6.3 million contract for 1990–92, signed in March; the deal, which included a $900,000 signing bonus to help make up for his salary having lagged, made him the game’s highest-paid second baseman. Sandberg hit .290/.356/.497 (130 OPS+) with 30 homers (a new career high), 15 steals, and 6.1 WAR (seventh in the league). The Cubs, now managed by Don Zimmer, went 93-69 and won the NL East. Though Sandberg hit .400/.458/.800 in 20 plate appearances in the NLCS against the Giants, the Cubs were trounced four games to one in what had become a best-of-seven series since their last appearance.

Even as the Cubs slipped to 77 wins in 1990, Sandberg had his biggest year at the plate, reaching 40 homers and 100 RBI for the first time. To that he added 25 steals, and hit .306/.354/.559 (140 OPS+) with 7.1 WAR, good for third behind Barry Bonds and Lenny Dykstra. The All-Star Game was held at Wrigley Field that year, and Sandberg not only received more votes than any other NL player at any position, but he also won the Home Run Derby.

Sandberg’s homer output fell to 26 in each of the next two seasons, but they were hardly lesser ones relative to 1990. He produced a 138 OPS+ with 7.0 WAR in 1991 and a 145 OPS+ and 7.8 WAR (his best mark since ’84) in ’92, ranking second behind only Bonds in both of those years. In March of the latter season, his final one before free agency, he signed a four-year, $28.4 million extension, becoming baseball’s first $7 million man. In a Sports Illustrated cover story, Tim Kurkjian quoted rival general managers going over the top by blasting the Cubs for their “stupidity and timidity” in granting an extension (the Twins’ Andy MacPhail) and Sandberg for “unmitigated greed” (the Giants’ Al Rosen). The latter called the game’s rising salaries “Armageddon” and added, “I can’t see baseball surviving this.” Yeesh.

From 1982–92, Sandberg had been exceptionally durable, averaging 154 games a year and only once playing fewer than 153 (an ankle sprain sidelined him for nearly four weeks in 1987). He caught bad breaks in 1993, the first of which was an errant fastball from the Giants’ Mike Jackson in spring training, which broke a bone in his left hand and caused him to miss the Cubs’ first 21 games. He didn’t hit his first homer until May 15, and totaled just nine in 117 games before dislocating his right ring finger while sliding into home plate on September 13. For the year he hit .309/.359/.412 (109 OPS+), still good for 3.4 WAR.

Sandberg started slowly in 1994, hitting .238/.312/.390 with just five homers in 57 games. On June 13, 10 days after collecting his 2,000th career hit, the 34-year-old second baseman abruptly announced his retirement, becoming the second Chicago sports icon wearing uniform no. 23 to do so in less than a year. (Michael Jordan had left basketball the previous October and ended up playing baseball.) “I didn’t have what I felt I needed to go on the field ever day, give my very best and live up to the standards I set for myself,” said Sandberg at his press conference. “I’m not willing and I do not want to just hang around. I want to be the best.”

Sandberg went home to his two teenage children, but his marriage was about to fall apart. His wife Cindy, his high school sweetheart, had already filed for divorce in December 1993 but reconciled, then refiled one week after her husband’s retirement. Sandberg claimed that the domestic difficulties weren’t behind his retirement. In a 1995 autobiography, Second to Home, he criticized Cubs GM Larry Himes, whom he said “ripped (the team) to shreds right before my eyes” by letting Andre Dawson and Greg Maddux depart as free agents and flipping nearly the entire roster in a two-year span.

Sandberg sat out the 1995 season and remarried. On October 31, 1995, with Himes long gone from the Cubs (he was fired in late 1994), Sandberg announced he would return to the team, signing a $2.3 million contract. He homered 25 times, hit .244/.316/.444 (97 OPS+) and played exceptional defense en route to 3.2 WAR, but he couldn’t muster the same kind of magic in 1997. On August 2, he announced that he would retire at the end of the season, and on September 20, two days after his 38th birthday, the team held Ryne Sandberg Day.

Sandberg became eligible for the Hall of Fame on the 2003 BBWAA ballot. He debuted with 49.2%, the second-highest share for a first-year candidate that year (Eddie Murray sailed in with 85.3%) and the sixth highest overall; former Cubs teammates Dawson (50%) and Lee Smith (42.3%) finished immediately above and below him. Sandberg’s share rose to 61.1% in 2004 while Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley were elected, and he crossed the threshold with 76.2% in ’05.

In his induction speech, from which Clark quoted on Sunday, Sandberg used the word “respect” 21 times. Within, he explained the origins of his low-key style:

“I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponent or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. Make a great play — act like you’ve done it before… Hit a home run — put your head down, drop the bat, run around the bases, because the name on the front is more — a lot more important than the name on the back.”

By itself, the statement seemed innocuous enough, but further elements of the speech left room for the interpretation that he was taking a shot at performance-enhanced sluggers and particularly his flamboyant and over-muscled former teammate Sammy Sosa, then widely suspected of using PEDs to fuel his multi-season home run binge:

“In my day, if a guy came to spring training 20 pounds heavier than what he left, he was considered out of shape and was probably in trouble. He’d be under a microscope and the first time he couldn’t beat out a base hit or missed a fly ball, he was probably shipped out. These guys sitting up here did not pave the way for the rest of us so that players could swing for the fences every time up and forget how to move a runner over to third.”

The criticism buoyed the Cubs faithful, who had soured on Sosa after his tenure with the Cubs had ended with the team’s late-2004 collapse, a smashed boombox, and an unceremonious trade to the Orioles. Sandberg’s shots at Sosa and other PED users became more overt over the years. In December 2022, he joined a couple of other outspoken anti-PED critics (Frank Thomas and Jack Morris) on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee panel that elected Fred McGriff, while Bonds and Roger Clemens received so little support that their actual vote totals weren’t announced. Sosa, though eligible to appear on the ballot, was not up for consideration, but in conjunction with news that the Cubs would unveil a statue of Sandberg at Wrigley Field in the summer of 2024 — an honor that placed him in a pantheon with fellow franchise icons Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams — the Hall of Famer took another shot at Sosa, then estranged from the Cubs, by referring back to his own speech:

“For me, playing the game the right way, with respect, was always what I was taught in the minor leagues,” Sandberg said. “That was my Hall of Fame speech. I think I said it 28 times. And there was a little problem with the way that Sammy played the game. If that’s a roadblock, that’s a roadblock.”

Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa will be eligible for consideration again this winter, up against a new rule introduced in March that could prevent them from appearing on subsequent ballots if they fail to muster enough support.

In retirement, Sandberg stayed connected to baseball, working as a spring instructor for the Cubs. In December 2006, he was named manager of their A-level Peoria affiliate, which he managed to the Midwest League championship in the first of his two seasons there. He moved up to Double-A Tennessee in 2009, then Triple-A Iowa, where he earned Pacific Coast League Manager of the Year honors while leading the team to an 82-62 record. After the 2009 season, Cubs manager Lou Piniella expressed the belief that Sandberg would be considered to succeed him — he planned to retire after the 2010 season — but instead the job went to interim manager Mike Quade, who had taken over in August when Piniella resigned ahead of schedule. Sandberg left the organization to manage the Phillies’ Triple-A Lehigh affiliate, whom he led to the International League championship; Baseball America named him its Minor League Manager of the Year.

After another year at Lehigh, Sandberg joined Manuel’s staff as the Phillies third base coach. With the team 53-67 in mid-August, Manuel was fired, and Sandberg named interim manager. The Phillies, whose aging core still included several key players from their 2007–11 run atop the NL East, went 20-22 the rest of the way, finished fourth, and removed the interim tag from Sandberg’s title. They slipped to fifth with another 73-89 record in 2014, however, and were headed for a 99-loss season in ’15 when Sandberg resigned on June 26.

“Sandberg never seemed to connect with his players, with players questioning the manager and coaching staff since the beginning of last season,” wrote MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki. “He also ruffled feathers with the way he benched former shortstop Jimmy Rollins in Spring Training 2014 and how he announced a plan to bench first baseman Ryan Howard that July.”

In 2016, Sandberg rejoined the Cubs organization as an ambassador for the team. In 2021, he began serving as a part-time analyst for Cubs games on Marquee Sports Network. In 2024, he announced that he had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. After undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, he was declared cancer free in August of that year, but in December he announced that the cancer had returned and was spreading to other organs.

In an era of bat flips and other prominent on-field celebrations, Sandberg’s style of play seems quaint, as does his eschewing of endorsements and his guarded public persona. But as Sunday made clear, he’s still held up as a paragon of baseball greatness, not just an icon but an ideal for others to follow.