Sandberg

There's a meme going around about how there is no stronger fandom than that between an seven-year-old and a mediocre player on his favorite baseball team.

And maybe there's some truth for that.  I've still got a lot of fondness for Jody Davis, or Keith Moreland....or even Thad Bosley.

Mine wasn't a mediocre player, though.

I don't know exactly when I latched on to Sandberg, but I definitely remember the Sandberg Game.

I was 7, that June 23, 1984.

I didn't watch the whole game.  We'd been out doing whatever families  with seven- and three-year-olds do.  But we got home, and I saw the last few innings.  I watched Ryno pick that game up, put it in his pocket and say "it's mine, now."

I've since watched the game on Youtube, and it's one of the few things out there that makes me feel like I'm 7 years old again.

Sometime later that season, or maybe the season after, my grandparents were down for a visit from New Jersey.  And Grandpop wandered in to my watching the Cubs.  He asked who my favorite player was, and I said Sandberg.  He said that Sandberg was a good one.  Maybe, he said, the best clutch hitter he'd ever seen.  And he mentioned that Sandberg Game.

He was my favorite player.

I don't have a lot else to say, except that he did it quietly, and without ballyhoo.

In fact, he probably should have had some more ballyhoo.  An abrupt retirement in 1994, that lasted through 1995 might have had something to do with the Hall of Fame questions that emerged after his final retirement in 1997.  Jeff Pearlman called him in a recent video a "generational talent."  And that's right.  He was the best second baseman of the second half of the century, with apologies to Roberto Alomar, and none to Joe Morgan's favorite player, Joe Morgan.  But because most baseball writers revert to baseball card statistics when a player hasn't been in their eyeline for the 5 years requisite for Hall admission, and because he didn't hit 300 homers, or hit .300 for a career, he got overlooked.

I'll always remember fondly going to the Hall of Fame in the fall off 2005, with my buddy Steven, after he'd been inducted that summer.   Enough people raised a fuss when he was excluded.   I still have about a dozen of the postcards of Ryno's plaque floating around in my desk.   I'd like to go back.

My buddy Rob (is Rob still my buddy?.....I feel like I may have fucked up that friendship with my particular brand of standoffishness: I haven't talked to him in a couple years) got me a signed Ryno ball.  It's in my office.  I got a 1990 Donruss and a 1985 Topps card signed by him during his stint managing the Tennessee Smokies.  A few years ago, I completed a set of autographed Cubs cards from that 1985 set, and I'm slowly working on that 1990  Donruss set.....

Monday was a crappy night.  The Cubs were playing the uninspiring ball that they've been playing since before the All-Star Break.  I'm dealing with health annoyances (after a trip to my new cardiologist last week, I'm back in AFib and I'm having to wear a monitor for a month to see how constant it is....and I went for my echocardiogram Monday).  Shyam was still catching up from being sick the week of the All-Star Game, and dealing with having to replace one of the trucks at work.  And it's just so fucking hot.  Highs in the high 90s, with high humidity, but somehow no rain in my corner of Tennessee.

And then, in the middle of that Brewers debacle, there came the Facebooke post that Ryno had succumbed to the cancer that he'd been fighting.

Life comes in and punches a seven-year-old every now and then.

The tributes have been cool.  Hearing fans and opponents talk him up.  Announcers and teammates.  I cried a little bit when I heard Shawon Dunston talk about how special he, Andre Dawson and Mark Grace were to Ryno.  That lifted my heart a little, knowing that those 80's teams were as meaningful to those guys as they were to Tommy Acuff in Tennessee.

But, you still go out there and play.  Keep moving forward. That's one of the things I took from Ryno.  Even when you're slumping (which he did, seemingly the start of every season.....I wonder what his career slash line might look like if you omitted April from his career).   Just put the cleats on....