CHICAGO (WGN) — On Monday, the Chicago community lost one of its all-time great sports icons. Chicago Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg has died at the age of 65, according to the franchise.
Sandberg died in hospice care following complications in his ongoing battle with prostate cancer.
More info: Ryne Sandberg shares health update amid cancer battle
The news comes after Sandberg announced his prostate cancer had relapsed and spread throughout his body in December 2024.
The Impact of One Man’s Quiet Leadership
Sandberg certainly wasn’t the most vocal professional athlete in Chicago, but his quiet leadership spoke to a generation of Chicago sports fans.
The greatness of Sandberg wasn’t necessarily found in the statistics that made him a baseball Hall of Famer. What made him great was his daily example of integrity and dignity—a quality that was ten times more powerful than his bat.
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At least, if you listened to Harry Caray.
“The more you talk about heroes and images, how wonderful is it to have a kid like this up on a pedestal for our youngsters?” Caray said about Sandberg in 1984. “Because he fits the whole description of what you’d like your little kid to be.”
What you’d like your little kid to be.
There was no one better to speak to that than Sandberg’s own father, who beamed with pride seeing his son become the man Chicago cherishes today.
“He’s always been a pleasant individual who has gotten along with everyone,” Derwent Sandberg said in 1984. “Anyone who coached him at his high school would say that he was one of those athletes who listened and kept their mouth shut and learned something.”
But Sandberg also taught us something: That aiming for perfection must be combined with a willingness to work.
“He worked hard to keep himself in shape,” former Cubs first baseman Mark Grace said. “Never missed a day of batting practice. Never missed a day of taking infield.”
That tireless preparation propelled his then-record 123-game streak without making an error across the 1989 and 1990 MLB seasons. It was so rare for him to make a mistake, he almost seemed perfect—a professional in pinstripes every afternoon.
“I’m very proud of the 13 years that I spent here,” Sandberg said, fighting back tears, after announcing his first retirement after the 1994 season. “I feel like I’ve given all of me to the Chicago Cubs. Not only during the baseball season, but all year round.”
Sandberg set standards for himself rarely matched by his team, or anyone else in Major League Baseball, for that matter. It’s why, when he felt his focus slipping in 1994, Sandberg shocked the sports world and retired, leaving behind a $16 million contract.
It was his code of morality—not concern for money—that drove the decision.
“With the feelings I did not have, I feel that’s what I needed to go out on the field each day to give my very best and live up to the standards that I have set for myself,” Sandberg said at the time.
He returned in 1996 and played two more seasons for the Cubs, before retiring for good after the 1997 season, and leaving behind a legacy of quiet leadership.
What made him great? Perhaps one word in particular.
Respect.
His opponents, his teammates, the fans and the City of Chicago all received respect from the man nicknamed “Ryno.”
It was the theme of his Hall of Fame induction speech, which now feels like an epitaph of excellence, that characterized not only one of Chicago’s greatest athletes, but also one of its greatest humans.
“I’m a baseball player. I’ve always been a baseball player. I’m still a baseball player,” Sandberg said in 2005. “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. 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. Play it right, and with respect.”
Ryno’s life before the Cubs
Born to a nurse and a mortician on Sept. 18, 1959 in Spokane, Washington, baseball was a part of the fabric of his being from the very beginning. Sandberg was named after 10-year big leaguer Ryne Duren, who was an All-Star relief pitcher and World Series champion with the New York Yankees in the late 1950s.
But in his younger years, baseball wasn’t the only sport Sandberg starred in.
He played baseball, basketball and football at North Central High School in the Spokane area growing up. By the time Sandberg was a senior at NCHS, he was an All-American quarterback with a signed letter of intent to play QB at Washington State University, but he backed out to play pro baseball after the Philadelphia Phillies drafted him in the 20th round of the 1978 MLB amateur draft.
Sandberg played three years in the Phillies’ minor league system before making his major-league debut at shortstop for Philadelphia in September 1981. He played in 13 games that season, going 1-6 at the plate.
His first career hit? It came at Wrigley Field on Sept. 27, 1981, in a 14-0 loss to the Cubs, where Sandberg had to ask starting shortstop Larry Bowa to borrow a bat.
“I asked Larry Bowa if he had any extra bats I could use in the game, so he loaned me a bat and I got my first hit with a Larry Bowa bat,” Sandberg told Delaware Online in 2013. “Even today, I still have the bat and the ball.”
In the eyes of the Phillies, those 13 games and six at-bats were enough to let Sandberg fly away in a trade to the Cubs before the start of the 1982 season. Philadelphia didn’t see Sandberg as their shortstop of the future, and he was blocked by established veterans like Manny Trillo and Mike Schmidt at second and third base.
The Phillies sent Sandberg and Bowa to the Cubs for Ivan DeJesus in 1982 after contract negotiations broke down between them and Bowa.
The skinny was that Bowa—a 36-year-old shortstop at the time—was previously promised a three-year extension by past ownership before the team was sold. Under new ownership and a new team president, the Phillies wanted nothing to do with an aging shortstop when they had promising prospects in the pipeline.
That turned into a situation where Philadelphia publicly said Bowa was gone after he called team president Bill Giles a liar. This allowed for Chicago to have a leg up in trade negotiations in the form of asking for a certain prospect to be included in the Bowa deal—Sandberg.
Sandberg’s Arrival on the North Side
After landing on the North Side, Sandberg initially played third base and a bit of center field in 1982 before being permanently moved to second base in 1983. His glove immediately flashed after the move to second, and he won his first Gold Glove in his second full-time MLB season, but he really began to blossom in 1984.
He and Bob Dernier formed “the Daily Double” at the top of the Cubs lineup as Sandberg posted a .314 batting average with 200 hits, 36 doubles, 19 triples 19 home runs, 84 RBI and 32 stolen bases on his way to earning the 1984 National League MVP award.
Nothing epitomized his rise to stardom more during this period than what fans know simply as “The Sandberg Game.”
In the nationally televised NBC Game of the Week on June 23, 1984, the Cubs faced off against their bitter rival, the St. Louis Cardinals. In the ninth inning, the Cubs trailed 9-8 and were facing future Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter. Sandberg hit a game-tying solo home run and an inning later, hit another game-tying homer—this time of the two-run variety.
The Cubs went on to win 12-11 in 11 innings, forever immortalizing that night among Chicago sports lore.
In all, Sandberg played 15 seasons on the North Side and finished his career as a Cub following the 1997 season. By the time he hung up his cleats, he had become a ten-time all-star, nine-time Gold Glove winner (all consecutively), a seven-time Silver Slugger, and the 1990 home run derby champion (the same season he led the NL in home runs).
Retirement and Managerial Career
Sandberg was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, in 2005.
Joined by Hall of Fame classmate Wade Boggs, he delivered a riveting speech at his induction ceremony.
Sandberg thanked the writers who voted for him and pointed out that there needs to be more respect for the game, from his point of view. He emphasized a need for the smaller, more unheralded skills to continue to be emphasized, like executing a sacrifice bunt or turning a double play. He also opined for his former teammate, Andre Dawson, to be inducted into Cooperstown along with another Cubs great, Ron Santo.
Less than a month after he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Cubs retired his No. 23 on Aug. 28, 2005. He was the fourth Cub to have his number retired by the franchise at the time, joining Ernie Banks (No. 14), Billy Williams (No. 26) and Ron Santo (No. 10).
Sandberg spent 2007-12 climbing the Minor League ranks as a manager. He started off with the Single-A Peoria Chiefs in the Midwest League, and eventually climbed all the way to Triple-A by December 2009, when Sandberg was named manager of the Iowa Cubs. He led the club to an 82-62 record in 2010 and was named Pacific Coast League Manager of the Year.
At the time, Sandberg said he wanted to become manager of the Cubs someday, and then-manager Lou Piniella said he could be in the mix to replace him after his retirement.
Instead, Mike Quade was given the job and Sandberg left the Cubs organization to take a gig as the manager of the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, ahead of the 2011 baseball season.
A year after being named Midwest League Manager of the Year, he led the IronPigs to their first-ever playoff appearance and berth in the International League championship series. Baseball America named him their 2011 Minor League Manager of the Year for his efforts.
After another season as the manager of Lehigh Valley in 2012, Philadelphia promoted Sandberg to the big league club as the Phillies’ third base coach ahead of the 2013 MLB season. He was then promoted to interim manager after Charlie Manuel was fired in August 2013.
Then on Sept. 22, 2013, Philadelphia named him the team’s permanent manager and signed him to a three-year contract. He became the first Hall of Fame player to be a full-time manager for an MLB team since Frank Robinson did so with the Montreal Expos and Washington Nationals from 2002-06.
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Cubs Unveil Sandberg Statue
The Cubs unveiled a statue of the Hall of Fame second baseman outside Wrigley Field before a Sunday series finale against the New York Mets on June 23, 2024, 40 years to the day of the historic Sandberg Game.
Sandberg, who was 64 years old at the time, said the ceremony was especially touching after his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
“My life changed a lot in 1984,” Sandberg said of his MVP season, “but it was nothing like what happened six months ago.”
There was no shortage of friends there as the statue, depicting Sandberg crouched and waiting for a grounder, was dedicated. Some teammates from Chicago’s 1984 and ’89 NL East champions were there, along with the Cubs’ current players, who watched the ceremony from the lower-deck concourse railing.
Bob Costas emceed the ceremony, which also drew Dawson and Cubs Hall of Famers like Ferguson Jenkins and Williams. Actor Bill Murray, a visible and vocal Cubs fan for decades, also made the trip.
“I can’t really say it’s what I thought; it’s more than what I thought,” Sandberg said. “To see all those guys come out, it was very touching.”
The statue took its place next to bronze tributes to fellow Hall of Famers Jenkins, Williams, Santo and Banks. Groundskeepers cut Sandberg’s number into the center field grass before the start of the weekend series against the Mets.
*Reporting from the Associated Press contributed toward this report.
