Sandberg Speaks Superstar Explains Sudden Departure From Game

Is that so wrong?

Can’t a guy just wake up one morning and realize that after 17 years of being a full-time baseball player, it was time to become a full-time father?

That’s exactly what happened to Ryne Sandberg on the morning of June 11, 1994. Two days later, the beloved second baseman for the Chicago Cubs officially walked away from the game - and a $16 million contract - and came home to Arizona to be with his two children.

Some people couldn’t accept that, though. Maybe it is because the sports world has such a hard time letting its heroes say goodbye. Maybe Sandberg’s wish just to be a daddy again sounded too rich and suspiciously curious.

In the days that followed his retirement, the rumors began to circulate across the country. Some of them were laughable, Sandberg said, and some of them were sick. It’s been almost a year now since Chicago’s other No. 23 hung it up for real, but the hearsay continues even today.

“I had to do something,” he said. So he wrote a book.

“Second to Home,” due to hit bookstore shelves in the coming days, should quell all the gossip and put the rumors to rest. In the book, co-written by Barry Rozner, the Cubs’ beat writer for the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald since 1989, Sandberg enthusiastically describes all the events that finally led up to his decision to quit smacking fastballs and turning double plays at age 34.

Second to Home (Bonus Books, $22.95) traces Sandberg’s childhood in Spokane through his days in the minor leagues and finally, to his 13-year career with the Cubs, which turned sour after playing for 11 different managers and seeing twice that many teammates get shown the door by General Manager Larry Himes, who since has been demoted by the club.

“There were a lot of questions on why I decided to retire, a lot of speculation on some things, and I just wanted to clear that up, tell my story, and set the record straight,” Sandberg told The Arizona Republic earlier this week.

“Another reason I decided to do it, was that I found it a lot of fun to reminisce about some of the good times. It was also a good way to get rid of some of the frustration that took place during the last few years I was there.”

Subtitled Ryne Sandberg Speaks Up, Ryno does exactly that in several chapters of his 298-page autobiography. He openly criticizes the Cubs’ organization, especially Himes, and offers dozens of juicy baseball barbs and some hilarious locker room anecdotes.

“The purpose wasn’t to try and rip as many people as I could,” Sandberg said of the book, which he sold 500 copies of last week during a 90-minute signing session in Los Angeles. “I just spoke my true feelings the best I could.”

It has been widely speculated that his marital situation was a factor in his decision to retire, but Sandberg quashes that notion early and often in the book, writing, “Millions of people have personal problems, but they don’t quit their jobs because of them, and neither did I.”

Sandberg and his wife of 15 years, Cindy, separated 10 days after his retirement. He writes that he had no idea it was coming. They remain good friends, however, and Ryne gets to spend quality time with Justin, 13, and Lindsey, 11. They go everywhere together, from water skiing outings to camping and fishing trips. He’s there whenever one of them has a ballgame or a recital, or just needs a hug.

In the book, Sandberg writes he got heartaches driving down Lake Shore Drive on his way to ballgames at Wrigley Field and watching families play together on the beach. Every time he drove by, the scene was harder to watch.

“I missed doing those types of things regular people get to do,” he said during a telephone interview from his Phoenix home. “When you’re locked up with a baseball schedule like I was for 17 years … it just got to the point where I had to say, ‘That’s it. That’s enough.’ “

Truth be told, Sandberg also had enough with the changing scene in baseball, the disrespect shown to some players, and the lack of respect to the game shown by younger players, who he writes are “more concerned about what suits to buy” than what pitcher they were scheduled to face that day.

He also had enough of Himes, the former Chicago GM, whom he said “ripped (the Cubs) to shreds right before my eyes.” The Cubbies, he said, “became a rudderless ship drifting through time, wasting the prime years of my career.”

“By the time Jose Vizcaino was traded in the spring of ‘94, we had only three players remaining from the day Larry Himes took over only two years before,” Sandberg writes.

What’s worse, Sandberg tells, is that Himes “was removing guys who wanted to be Cubs and replacing them with guys who didn’t seem to want to be anywhere.”

“I didn’t feel like I was part of the ballclub anymore,” he told The Republic. “Larry tore it down.”

In one chapter titled, “The Summer of Torture,” Sandberg paints a very telling portrait of Himes, now a special-assignment scout and director of Arizona operations for the club.

It has to do with Sandberg collecting his 2,000th career hit on June 3, 1993. He did it in Colorado against the expansion Rockies. After the game, Rockies General Manager Bob Gebhard sent a bottle of champagne down to the Chicago clubhouse in honor of the occasion.

But Himes, Sandberg said, “never even came down to shake my hand.”

Himes was unavailable for comment.

There are other tantalizing tales in Second to Home, like the garage Sandberg called home during his first season in the minor leagues in Helena, Mont. Then there’s his first visit to HoHoKam Park in Mesa. Ironically, the day after he and Cindy toured the facility out of curiosity, he was traded from the Phillies to the Cubs.

One of the funniest stories in the book deals with double-play partner, shortstop Shawon Dunston and a memorable at-bat against fireballer Nolan Ryan. Gene Michael, then the Cubs’ skipper, had been claiming all day that Ryan was purposely scuffing the ball. He finally yelled at Dunston to have the umpire check it out.

“Are you crazy?” Dunston said. “(Ryan) will hit me between the eyes!”

A side-splitting exchange between Dunston and Michael is then described.

Something almost as laughable, Sandberg said, is the notion that he will return to the game, a la Michael Jordan, and resume his career with the Cubs.

“No. It’s not going to happen,” he told The Republic. “I’ve still got my two kids. That’s the prime reason I retired in the first place.”

Sandberg did, however, say he wouldn’t have left the Cubs if today’s new management team had been in place then, and if the team had been winning in the summer of ‘94.

So what are his plans?

For now, he says, he will try to spend as much time as he can with Justin and Lindsey. Beyond that, the future could bring anything, perhaps even a job with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Valley’s major league expansion team that will begin play in three years.

Toward the end of his book, Sandberg mentions that could be a possibility. He said he’s good friends with Jerry Colangelo, the Diamondbacks’ managing owner and chief executive officer.

“I love the game of baseball,” Sandberg said, “and maybe down the road I’ll get involved with the team. In what capacity, I don’t know. I’m still enjoying retirement.”