It sounds strange in this, the culture of $500-a-week sports camps, AAU travel teams and hired-gun skills coaches.

Such notions never occurred to Ryne Sandberg, who couldn't have afforded them anyway. In fact, he didn't play actual organized baseball until the seventh grade, because the grade schools only offered softball then.

You think next year's No. 1 draft choice wasn't hitting off a tee at age 2?

What Sandberg did have was time and imagination, a bat and a glove, maybe a tennis or golf ball to spice things up – and the house at 723 W. Augusta, which took a pounding more intense than Fenway's Green Monster or Wrigley's ivied brick ever endured.

Thump . . . thump . . . thump.

Hear it? It's the sound of a kid on his way to the Baseball Hall of Fame.