In 1984, the Chicago Bulls drafted a young star named Michael Jordan. Mike Ditka’s Chicago Bears were on the precipice of greatness. No one knew it then, but Jordan’s Bulls and Ditka’s Bears would go on to win seven championships and create legacies that have yet to be topped.
But in 1984, it was the Chicago Cubs who ruled the city, and it was Ryne Sandberg, a 24-year-old second baseman who had neither Jordan’s aura nor Ditka’s image, who was the biggest star in Chicago.
Sandberg, who won the National League MVP Award in just his third full season in the majors, went on to make the Hall of Fame, have his number retired and get a statue. He was a legend in a city of giants.
A year and a month after attending that statue dedication outside of Wrigley Field, Sandberg, one of the most beloved athletes in Chicago history, died Monday of complications from metastatic prostate cancer. He was 65. The news came midway through the Cubs’ 8-4 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Cubs clubhouse was quiet after the game. Every player had a T-shirt honoring Sandberg on their chair.
Cubs manager Craig Counsell found out about Sandberg’s passing shortly before the game began. He addressed the team after it was over.
“We knew how much he loved being a Cub,” said Ian Happ, the longest tenured Cubs player. “And we’re really lucky in this organization to have legends that want to come back and want to be around. He was a special man and we’ll miss him very much.”
Sandberg had been suffering from cancer for more than a year. On July 16, he released a statement that presaged his passing.
Ryne Sandberg provides a health update.
(via rynesandberg23/IG) pic.twitter.com/ndeZR07WuN
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) July 16, 2025
With all the excitement and tension over a pennant race and the trade deadline, the stark reality of Sandberg’s health lingered over the Cubs.
Jon Lester and Kerry Wood wore his jersey to games against the Boston Red Sox, and Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer offered a pre-eulogy during an inning in the team’s broadcast booth. On July 23, Sandberg’s teammate Bobby Dernier sang the seventh-inning stretch and wore a Sandberg jersey to the booth. Sandberg couldn’t be at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Sunday in Cooperstown, but chairperson Jane Forbes Clark invoked his 2005 induction speech in her address.
Two decades later and Ryne Sandberg’s words still echo throughout Cooperstown. pic.twitter.com/IuZAU1MiAY
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) July 28, 2025
In that speech, written with Daily Herald columnist Barry Rozner, Sandberg said: “The reason I am here, they tell me, is that I played the game a certain way, that I played the game the way it was supposed to be played. I don’t know about that, but I do know this: I had too much respect for the game to play it any other way.”
The speech, seen as a rebuke of the steroid era, struck a nerve because Sandberg was never a big talker. He didn’t have Rick Sutcliffe’s larger-than-life personality or Larry Bowa’s sharp tongue. But he was the baseball player whom people pointed to when they talked about how to play the game. His statue outside of Wrigley Field captures him in his defensive crouch, ready to make a heads-up play.
“The statue reflects ’80s, ’90s baseball for me,” Sandberg said then. “It’s got the old vintage flip-down glasses, which were a must every single day game at Wrigley Field. The gold patch on the glove signifies the Gold Gloves that were won. The vintage pullover jersey, not the button-down, and the elastic pants right on down to the stirrups. The fans will recognize that as ’80s style. They might even call it retro.”
Sandberg never went out of style in Chicago, where his very presence thrilled fans and reminded them of glory days gone by. Before 2016, the history of the Cubs was dominated by what could have been. But Sandberg stood out. He made 10 consecutive All-Star Games, earned nine Gold Gloves and won the 1984 NL MVP as a 24-year-old kid.
“He was kind of just really good at everything,” Counsell said. “He was fast, he was a great defender, loved triples. Once a week, we’ll talk about, ‘How did he hit (13) triples in Wrigley (in 1984)?’ Literally once a week, (bench coach) Ryan Flaherty and I will talk about that. But he loved the game and he played it in a way that was fun for me to watch.”
For all that was wrong with the Cubs over the years, Sandberg, like Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Fergie Jenkins before him, was all that was right. More than a compiler of statistics and a turner of double plays, he made Cubs fans feel something. There’s no greater honor for a ballplayer than to inspire hope in others.
The entire Cubs team watched his statue dedication, and both Happ and Counsell said they will never forget it.
“I think those are the moments that kind of connect you generationally as baseball players,” Counsell said. “They connect you to a city and you get an understanding of the impact that you can have on people if you live your life in a positive manner.”
After his cancer diagnosis, Sandberg found a new way to connect with people around him, from friends and family to fans.
“I’ve learned about the people in my life,” Sandberg said about making his condition public. “From my family to my friends to my neighbors to my teammates to the Cubs fans, it’s all about the relationships I have with people, and there’s a lot of them. So just a reflection on that, and to see everybody here today, that’s what I’m talking about, how special it is. I’ve felt it.”
A year after his viral Hall of Fame speech, Sandberg decided he wanted to be a manager. He interviewed for the job Lou Piniella got before the 2007 season. With openings in the Cubs’ minor-league system, he went down to Class-A Peoria.
A Hall of Famer in the bushes was an interesting story. He worked his way up the chain to Triple-A Iowa, but when he didn’t get the nod to replace Piniella, he left for the Philadelphia Phillies organization and eventually got the big-league managing job there.
“It’s been living the dream all over again,” he said before a game against the Cubs in 2013. “From making my way up the minor leagues to getting to the major leagues this year as a coach and getting the chance to manage, it’s full circle in a lot of ways.”
But this time, the story didn’t end in success. The job didn’t fit, the losses piled up, and he left the Phillies midway through the 2015 season. His in-uniform baseball career was over.
But Sandberg then settled into the role he was best suited to play: Ryno, Cubs legend.
Just seeing Sandberg, just shaking his hand and taking a picture, was enough to make a Cubs fan’s day. Maybe their year. He made kids feel special and adults feel like kids.
“There’s a whole generation of Cubs fans that just absolutely adore Ryno, and you could feel it,” Happ said. “You could feel that when he was around, whether it was people yelling at him in spring training, or just when he would come on the field in those last few first pitches that he threw.”
Much like how Wrigley Field represents something more than a baseball stadium, Sandberg is more than just a Baseball-Reference page and a flag on the foul pole.
You can’t overemphasize what he and the ’84 Cubs meant to this franchise and the city. That team created a generation of fans who then raised their kids as Cubs fans.
Before ’84, the Cubs had never drawn 2 million fans to Wrigley Field. The team hadn’t been in the postseason since 1945. But everything changed in 1984, with Sandberg leading the way on the field and Harry Caray in the WGN-TV booth. It was as if the Cubs went from black and white to Technicolor. Wrigley Field became a tourist attraction. The only times the Cubs have failed to draw 2 million in a season since ’84 were the two strike-shortened seasons and the two COVID-19-restricted ones.
In 1984, they won 96 games behind the second baseman from Spokane, Wash., who collected 200 hits and hit as many triples (19) as home runs (19). Sandberg put up a .314/.367/.520 slash line that season. He was one vote shy of being the unanimous MVP. He hit .368 in the playoffs that year, and in 1989, when the Cubs returned to the postseason, he was even better. In his career, Sandberg played only 10 playoff games, and he collected 15 hits, seven of which went for extra bases, and six walks. Imagine him playing in a World Series. I’m sure that he did as he watched the Cubs finally do it in 2016.
His most indelible moment came in the regular season in 1984. “The Sandberg Game” remains etched in memory in the days when a regular-season baseball game could capture a country’s interest. On June 23, 1984, with a young Bob Costas on the mic on NBC, Sandberg hit two home runs that tied the score in the ninth and 10th innings off Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter.
𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟐𝟑, 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟒
In the famous “Sandberg Game” at Wrigley Field, Ryne Sandberg hit a home run in the 9th to tie the game at 9, then hit another in the 10th, knotting the game at 11. The Cubs would go on to win 12-11.
— This Day in Chicago Sports (@ChiSportsDay) June 23, 2025
Sandberg is in the top five of most offensive categories for the Cubs, including home runs. He hit 282 of them in a Cubs uniform, and in 1990, he led the NL with 40 homers and somehow also won the Home Run Derby at Wrigley Field with a whopping three. (The rules were different back then, but the wind at Wrigley Field was still vexing.)
He hit 30 homers in 1989, when the Cubs made the playoffs, making him the first second baseman in major-league history to hit 30 homers in consecutive seasons.
“How would you like to be a manager in the major leagues and have a guy who makes all the plays, hits .300 and gets 30 home runs?” Cubs manager Don Zimmer said.
A lot has changed since Sandberg hung up his spikes for the second and final time in 1997.
The Cubs won it all — I was on the local pregame show with Sandberg that night — Wrigley Field has giant TV screens and high-end luxury clubs. Every inch of the area around the ballpark has been commodified and monetized. Day baseball is still around, but mostly just on the weekend. The lights are used more than ever. “The Sandberg Game” replays on a team-owned TV channel.
It was men like Sandberg who made all of this possible. Cubs players will wear a patch honoring him on their jerseys for the rest of the season. Cubs fans will wear his memory in their hearts forever.
(Photo: Ronald C. Modra / Getty Images)
