Sandberg: ‘This Is Something That I Wanted To Do And Needed To Do’

The Hall of Fame will have to wait. Spokane native Ryne Sandberg is ready to lace up his spikes, pull on his golden glove, range behind second base and make another great play for the Chicago Cubs.

“I was a baseball player. I’m still a baseball player. And I’ll always be that,” Sandberg, 36, said Tuesday after ending his 16-1/2-month retirement by signing a one-year contract.

“I did the retirement thing. I did the summer activities and all that. It just got to the point where now it was time to go back and play baseball.

“This is something that I wanted to do and I needed to do. It was very important to me. I don’t think it really left me.”

But Sandberg - statistically the best fielding second baseman in major-league history, a 10-time N.L. All-Star and the 1984 league MVP left it. In so doing, he walked away from the approximately $17 million he had left on his contract.

When he stunned Chicago with his announcement on June 13, 1994, his Cubs were in last place. In his opinion, general manager Larry Himes had ruined the team. And his personal life was in turmoil; his wife would file for divorce later that month.

A lifetime .289 hitter with 245 career home runs, 905 RBIs and 325 stolen bases, Sandberg was batting .238 with five homers, 24 RBIs and two steals in 57 games and was in a 1-for-28 slump.

Baseball was no longer fun. So he retired.

“That was something I had to do,” the North Central High School graduate said. “I couldn’t worry about what the public thought.”

Some labeled him a quitter.

“He didn’t like the front office, he didn’t like losing, he didn’t like the manager, he didn’t like the things in his personal life,” said Cubs first baseman Mark Grace, one of Sandberg’s closest friends in baseball.

The Cubs were 49-64 when the strike ended the season.

Then, Andy MacPhail was hired away from the Minnesota Twins to run the team. MacPhail replaced Himes with Ed Lynch, who fired Tom Trebelhorn as manager and hired Jim Riggleman.

Once play resumed this season, the Cubs got off to a fast start. After an extended slump, they won eight consecutive late-September games to move into contention for a playoff spot and weren’t eliminated until the second-to-last day of the season.

Sandberg, who had remarried, returned to Wrigley Field to tape television commercials and watched the Cubs’ late-season charge.

“I liked what I saw,” said Sandberg, whose one-year deal reportedly is worth $2 million. “It was really just after the season ended that it dawned on me that (coming back) was what I wanted to do. The change of attitude and the feeling around Wrigley Field was something that I liked. I missed being at Wrigley Field every day, being part of the team. That’s what I’m going back for.”

While it has been suggested Sandberg might play third base to save wear and tear on his body, he said: “The intent for me signing the contract and coming back with the Cubs is to play second base.”

Lynch, who had the good fortune to pitch in front of baseball’s best second baseman in 1986 and 1987, called it “flattering” that his former teammate frequently complemented the Cubs’ new front office.

“And money wasn’t his motivation for coming back,” Lynch said.

Noting that Grace, shortstop Shawon Dunston and pitchers Jaime Navarro and Randy Myers are free agents, the GM said: “He had no intention of doing anything to hurt our ability to sign our players.”

Season tickets had dwindled, ticket operations director Frank Maloney said Tuesday.

“But by 10 o’clock this morning,” he said, “we already had three calls from people who had dropped their tickets because of the strike but now wanted to renew them because of Ryne Sandberg. These days, heroes are hard to come by.”