Second to Home: Ryne Sandberg Opens Up

Sure-to-be Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg could have loafed through the remaining years of a $28 million contract. It's been done before in baseball. But "Ryno," the Chicago Cubs perennial All-Star second baseman, gave it all up one sunny Monday in June 1994. His mid-season retirement startled sports pundits and fans everywhere.
Now Ryno tells his story. Why he left the way he left. As he reviews his 17-year career, this reticent man now discloses what he never felt comfortable discussing as an active player. Here are the contract details. Here, at length, are discussions of players, coaches, managers, and general managers with whom he spent 17 years of professional baseball. Here are batting tips that converted him from a singles hitter to a feared home-run slugger.
Here is Ryne the human being, Ryne the father, and Ryno the ball player. Here is the Ryne Sandberg that no one ever knew - until now.

Among the biggest baseball news of 1994 was the retirement in midseason of Sandberg, who had been the Chicago Cubs second baseman since 1982. In his exceptional career, he was named the league's MVP in 1984, played in 10 All-Star games and won nine Gold Gloves. A star on the field, he was also admired as an individual. Movie-star handsome, shy and self-effacing, he stresses in his memoir that he concentrated on becoming a better player, with the goal of contributing to his team's success rather than compiling impressive personal statistics or squeezing more money out of management, although he made lots. He is a kindly judge of all with whom he came in contact-except Larry Himes, the management figure who, in his view, wrecked the Cubs in the early 1990s with injudicious firings and trades. With Rozner, a reporter for the Arlington Heights, Ill., Daily Herald, he explains that he quit-and passed up $15 million-because he no longer had any competitive fire. An interesting look at an admirable player of a major sport. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ryne Sandberg, the Chicago Cub second baseman who retired in midseason last year, is certain to be elected to baseball's Hall of Fame as soon as he's eligible. For all his talent afield, though, Sandberg had no ability to self-promote and no visible personality. In fact, he was so quiet and shy, he was almost invisible. Now, in this standard sports autobiography, he "tells all." It's a routine then-we-played account until we get to the last few years of Sandberg's career, when Larry Himes took over as the Cubs' general manager. Sandberg goes to great lengths to catalog Himes' gaffes, from dumb player acquisitions and strange trades through miscommunications, deliberate and otherwise. Each incident played a role in triggering Sandberg's unexpected retirement. The game wasn't fun, the Cubs were losing, and Sandberg didn't care anymore. End of story. Like Sandberg himself, this is a sincere if bland tale of sports success and disenchantment. For collections where baseball interest is high. Wes Lukowsky