The First And Best

Goodbye, Ryno.

The step-up from Tee-ball to pitching wasn't an easy one for me. We didn't have coach pitching. I don't even remember it being a thing when I was a kid. I could hit my dad when we practiced out in the park. But when it came to my little league, I might as well have taken a poster tube up to the plate.

But my glove kept me involved. Tee-ball was obviously a mishmash of positions and batting order and everything else. But when I stepped up to the pitching league, at Horner Park which my father assured me was the "serious" little league and that's why we eschewed leagues closer to our house, positions became a more important matter.

Also, even though the team a kid would end up on was random, I was on the Cubs. In this league, even as you moved up the leagues and ages, you stayed on the same team, from tee-ball to high school, basically. Somehow, the planets had aligned, and I got to wear "the C," and I would forever, as far as I was concerned.

From the first practice, and there were a lot of them all of the sudden, I lined up at 2nd base. I would only take defensive drills at 2nd. When my coaches discovered I had an arm, they tried to nudge me to 3rd, as I was one of maybe two kids on the team who could make the throw. I wouldn't have it. I played 2nd. I played 2nd for the Cubs.

I didn't so much play catch with my dad in the park. I had him throw me grounders, so that I could better play 2nd. I wanted him to throw grounders to my backhand especially, so I could practice sucking them up and then leaping to throw. Because I played 2nd. I played 2nd for the Cubs.

My team didn't offer the number 23. So I wore #2. It was close enough, I felt.

But the offense wouldn't follow. Like every kid, I had a mountainous fear of taking a pitch to the teeth to overcome. My father and brother repeatedly tried to assure me I could shrug off any pain from getting hit, or that I would get out of the way, and to concentrate on my swing. I could crush batting practice. But the games...just couldn't quite get there for my first few games.

One Saturday afternoon, due to a fair few kids not showing up either due to family vacations or whatever else, the coaches had no choice but to bat me second, while I was playing 2nd. I felt like I entered the gates of Valhalla. I WAS BATTING SECOND WHILE PLAYING 2ND BASE FOR THE CUBS!

That was the first game I had multiple hits in a game. It was the first time I had extra-base hits, two doubles. Because I was batting second and playing 2nd for the Cubs, I felt a responsibility to the status.

You may ask how can I remember a day some 35 years ago or so so vividly. You must not be from here. There isn't anyone ages 40-60, let's say, who grew up on the Northside who doesn't remember the day they just didn't want to be Ryne Sandberg (that was every day), but they were Ryne Sandberg.

Children are obviously front-runners, and drawn to the best player on the team. Ryno was obviously that for a long time for the Cubs. Everything he did was so smooth, it was obvious he was a cut above most of his dimwitted teammates (and there were so many of those).

It was more than that, though. There was something...accessible about Sandberg. We loved Andre Dawson when he arrived in 1987. But even with his knees already shot, we looked at Hawk as some sort of superhero. He was just from a different place. We'd watch him pulverize a ball onto Kenmore or produce a throw from right field that would rip a hole in space and time, and it didn't feel like anything that was possible. Not for us, anyway. Just a different beast.

Ryno was possible. He had that stance that was easy to imitate, which is all kids want to do when playing. I could never get that straight left leg and lean that Dawson had. Shawon Dunston was pretty easy to imitate, but he was the guy who swung at everything and he threw the ball harder than any of us ever would. Grace was left-handed. That wouldn't work.

Everything else Ryno did was just so efficient that you felt you could get there, as great as it was, because it looked simple. He didn't have to dive because his instincts were that good. He always bounced those leaping throws after a backhand grab so perfect. I bounce throws! Though for a very different reason, but that didn't matter! His homers landed just a row or two over the fence, and not declaring war on Wisconsin the way Dawson's did. Maybe one day I could just get it over the fence!

Ryno just made the game look so easy, which only made all of us want to play the game more than we already did. We thought baseball was hard, but look at how easy it was for him! Keep playing and eventually it'll be that easy for us!

It wasn't Ryne's fault that after "The Sandberg Game," he didn't really have any more "hero" moments. There was only one more playoff team, and thanks to Greg Maddux not covering his mouth, that NLCS was over before we could blink, and I and many others were in tears that wouldn't stop for days. That was the fault of the team and organization around him. He deserved better, but never acted like it. Even at that young age, we kind of knew he deserved better, but only loved him more because he never expressed any desire to be anything but ours.

The news last night was a true gut-punch. It had become clear in the past week or so that it was on the cards, given the news that was leaking out and the unannounced tributes that were starting to pop up. That doesn't mean any of us were ready.

There really isn't anything like the first player any kid loves. Though as we get older and it becomes impossible to feel that way about a player ever again, there's a part of you that still holds onto the first. To know that kid is still a part of you, the kid who just wanted to watch and be Ryne Sandberg and baseball meant everything and your sporadic trips to Wrigley was your trip to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (and the Cubs certainly had enough players that resembled Wonka's employees). That somewhere within you, you could still be that young.

Hearing Ryno had passed, in a way, felt like losing that kid, that part of all of us. That it'll be that much harder to access that joy and wonder. That we'll only get that much older without it. Ryno meant that to so many of us.

But thanks to Ryno, I had that day when I batted second and played 2nd for the Cubs, and everything that followed. I'll never let that go.