THE DAY WHEN RYNE SANDBERG TAUGHT ME HOW TO DO A CHICAGO RADIO PROGRAM
The station hired Ryno — would he say anything? — and it turns out he ripped Sammy Sosa, a pattern continuing in 2005 at the Baseball Hall of Fame and was recalled Sunday at the induction ceremony
The program director blitzed me with shock treatment. My new co-host signed a deal at our Chicago station, with his first broadcast at a bar near Wrigley Field. His name was Ryne Sandberg.
Was this a prank? Ryno, a hushed and honored gentleman, was joining me as a radio dude? Forgive me, but I couldn’t remember much of what he said as a superstar, though Cubdom loved him like few others. I’d been thrilled to walk into a city, in the early 1990s, where Michael Jordan and Sandberg were nationwide darlings. Unlike Jordan, someone might have to throw peanuts so he would speak into the microphone.
Would I carry the show for hours? What would Ryno do?
I was wrong. In an early appearance, he trashed the snot and bat cork out of Sammy Sosa. He made headlines for ESPN 1000. As a teammate, he never bothered a soul, yet there he was down Clark Street from right field, describing Sosa’s career as fraudulent after playing five seasons with him. As time passed, Sosa was known for using steroids — though never admitting it — and left the franchise before returning this season. When Sandberg was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005, he continued to address Sosa in his speech without mentioning his name.
This was done for pride more than underscoring another player’s infamy. Sandberg belongs with the all-time greats. Sosa does not.
“In my day, if a guy came to spring training 20 pounds heavier than when he left, he was considered out of shape and was probably in trouble. When did it become okay for someone to hit home runs and forget how to play the rest of the game?” Sandberg said that Sunday afternoon in Cooperstown.
“A lot of people say this honor validates my career, but I didn't work hard for validation. I didn't play the game right because I saw a reward at the end of the tunnel. I played it right because that's what you're supposed to do. If this validates anything, it's that learning how to bunt and hit and run, and turning two are more important than knowing where to find the little red light on the dugout camera.”
Who looked for the little red light? Sosa. When the subject turned to another Cubs great, Andre Dawson, Sandberg said: “He did it the right way, the natural way.”
This is how I’ll recall Sandberg, who died Monday at 65 after months of fighting cancer. This is how Major League Baseball will honor him, too. The day before, when five players received new plaques in upstate New York, Hall chairman Jane Forbes Clark opened the ceremony with another quote from Sandberg. This is the man I doubted as a broadcaster. Shame on me.
“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,” he said on stage. “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.”
It was Clark’s way of inviting a class of respectable achievers, in a year when Pete Rose eventually might find a way into the Hall when Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have not. Baseball continues to fight problem children who gamble on games and use steroids. My radio partner made it clear — with me, and far beyond me — that he was precious.
“There is not a man seated behind me this afternoon who didn’t play the game the same way Ryno did,” said Clark, paying tribute to Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, Dick Allen and Dave Parker. “It is that respect, character, sportsmanship, integrity and excellence that leads to just one percent of those who have ever played Major League Baseball to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
His radio days were brief, much shorter than a monumental career best known for The Sandberg Game. He tied the game with home runs in the ninth and 10th innings off relief great Bruce Sutter, leading to a victory. He never played in a World Series, living through the usual misery before the Cubs won in 2016. Fans still think he’d have been a better manager in 2011 than Mike Quade, allowing him to join the Phillies and become their dugout leader. He resigned with a 119-159 record while fighting back tears.
“I do not like to lose. I hate to lose,” Sandberg said. “That was the biggest thing that weighed on me. In a lot of ways I’m old-school, and I’m very much dissatisfied with the record and not pleased with the fact. That goes hand-in-hand with being a manager.”
His career went in one direction. My radio career went in another direction. In the end, I was told by the same program manager to stop criticizing the White Sox and Bulls, though my ratings — helped initially by Sandberg — beat the other sports station. I refused to sign a foolish document, which he presented at an Arby’s in the Loop. I told him I wrote a sports column at the Sun-Times and couldn’t play games. I was fired the morning after Christmas.
In Ryno’s world, Sammy Sosa won that political war. He only needed time to say it as fact. Twenty years later, he goes away with an unsurpassable memory. “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,” Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts said. “His dedication to and respect for the game — along with his unrelenting integrity, grit, hustle and competitive fire — were hallmarks of his career.”
Turns out the man didn’t speak until he had something to say. I should have left Ryno alone in the Wrigleyville bar. The show would have been better.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.