Phillies wish they could erase history

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – A rare, unfortunate disharmonic convergence occurs Sunday.

The Baseball Hall of Fame will induct its class of 2005 on the same day as the interleague, non-waiver, desperate-for-a-pennant trading deadline.

Which means, among other things, that as introverted, reticent Ryne Sandberg gets his grand opportunity here to bask in the glow and thank those who nudged him along from Spokane to baseball’s highest honor, George Steinbrenner and Theo Epstein will be snatching headlines and browbeating microphones to bluster about landing a left-handed reliever who will pitch to one batter every other day.

Headline of the day: See Sandberg, Page C7.

Well, let this be a cautionary tale.

It has only been the last couple of decades that the midseason trade deadline has grown into the monster that ate baseball – the wild card and division realignment giving more teams the false hope of finding the postseason with a flashlight, along with the burden of proving to their customers that they really care.

Except the Seattle Mariners, of course. You could always count on a slow news day in Seattle at the trading deadline.

You’d figure that trades made hastily are packed with the most gunpowder, and in the deadline deals of the past 10 years surely a few future Hall of Famers have been sacrificed to acquire The Last Piece of the Puzzle. But the fact is, even the trades painstakingly negotiated in the quiet of December and January come back to haunt – which brings us back to Sandberg and why he’s going into the Hall of Fame wearing a Chicago Cubs cap and not as an alum of the Philadelphia Phillies.

It was the Phillies, of course – specifically scout Bill Harper and his superiors – who wouldn’t give up on Sandberg in 1978, even after he’d signed a letter of intent to play football at Washington State and scared away the other baseball birddogs. It was Harper who kept coming around practice and games at North Central High School, occasionally bringing his immediate boss, Wilbur “Moose” Johnson.

They were the ones who urged the Phillies management to take Sandberg in the 20th round of the amateur draft. They were the ones who signed him at the family’s kitchen table and then fretted that they’d be fired for giving him a $25,000 bonus. And they were the ones who congratulated themselves as Sandberg made a steady climb as a shortstop through the Phillies’ minor league chain.

And they were the ones who cursed the suits when Sandberg was traded to the Cubs in 1982 at the age of 22.

“I’ll never forgive our guys for letting him go,” said Harper, who is here this weekend as Sandberg’s guest – though he’s still a part-time talent hound for the Phillies.

To Harper, as bad as the Phillies trading his pet project at all was the fact that Sandberg was a virtual throw-in to the deal that was otherwise a straight swap of shortstops – the Cubs’ Ivan DeJesus for aging Larry Bowa.

But there was something else at work. Dallas Green, Chicago’s new general manager, had come straight to the Cubs after managing the Phillies to the World Championship in 1980. Along with player development chief Gordy Goldsberry, who followed him, Green had insider knowledge of the Phillies’ farm system.

“We’d had Ryne up in 1981 in September,” Green recalled, “but the Phillies had a pretty set lineup that he wasn’t going to crack.”

He was talking about Bowa, but also third baseman Mike Schmidt, second baseman Manny Trillo and center fielder Garry Maddox – all established at positions to which Sandberg conceivably could have been moved. In addition, the Phillies had two other promising middle infielders – Luis Aguayo and Julio Franco. The latter had actually joined the organization the same year as Sandberg. When Sandberg was assigned to Helena in the Pioneer League, the Phillies placed Franco with a co-op team in Butte in the same league so he’d also get an opportunity to play regularly.

Bowa, never the retiring type, had scolded management in Philadelphia, probably as an exit strategy. The club also wanted to get younger at the position – but wasn’t ready to place its faith in the farm system. Green, for taking the old man off the Phillies’ hands, wanted a prospect.

Former Cubs manager Lee Elia has said they originally asked for a pitcher. Other reports say Green wanted Aguayo, and only settled for Sandberg. Green insists it was Sandberg all along.

“I watched him go up the ladder and knew it was only a matter of time,” he said. “Gordy should get the credit – he knew what a great athlete he was and he kept pounding on the Phillies that they weren’t going to play him.”

Sandberg’s quiet nature and unspectacular bearing on the field had started to work against him. Though Johnson and Larry Rojas, Sandberg’s manager in Helena, continued to champion him, others were doubtful. Bobby Wine, a Philadelphia coach, had managed Sandberg in winter ball in Venezuela and was convinced he wouldn’t be a major league shortstop.

Johnson remembers the fateful decision.

“At the time in the organization, there were five votes (among the key personnel people) when it came to trade somebody like Ryne,” said Johnson, a Gonzaga graduate who played with the Spokane Indians. “The year before he was traded, not a one of the five wanted to trade him – it was 5-0 against. That meant, in the Phillies’ book, he was untouchable.

“Then, that winter, when the deal was on the table, one of the scouts broke down and made it 4-1. Then a second scout made it 3-2. I stood for him and so did our scouting director, so it was down to Paul Owens, the general manager. He took us all out into a hallway at the hotel (at the winter meetings) and asked us one more time and it was 2-2 again. Hugh Alexander was the main scout for us in the major leagues and he looked at Paul and said, ‘You’re the boss and the boss makes the final decision.’ Paul thought about it for a minute and said, ‘We’ll trade him.’ “

The regret, obviously, would be almost immediate – by 1984, Sandberg was the National League MVP. The Phillies did find a solid second baseman in the ‘80s in Juan Samuel, but made do at shortstop with the likes of DeJesus and Steve Jeltz. By the time Sandberg announced his first retirement from the Cubs in 1994, another Spokane envoy, Kevin Stocker, was Philadelphia’s shortstop.

Giving up on a Hall of Famer in his prime – Frank Robinson in Cincinnati comes to mind – is probably a more egregious baseball sin, but letting the infant talent go for almost nothing inspires a lasting regret. It’s the Mets quitting on Nolan Ryan at age 19, the Reds shipping off Christy Mathewson at the same age and, of course, the Cubs trading Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio – a deal which may as well be the franchise logo.

Let’s not even get into the Curse of the Bambino, OK?

“You have to do what you think is right at the time,” Johnson said. “There isn’t a GM alive who hasn’t second-guessed himself.

“But I really wish the Phillies would have never made this trade.”