It was when I looked to my right and saw men in white pants and blue jerseys quietly zigzagging up the steps to the façade outside Wrigley Field that it struck me. Baseball is a special game.
If you’re not careful, you’ll get lost in symbolism, nostalgia, deep stuff.
Soon the entire Cubs team was there, some players standing straight, others resting elbows on the railing, all looking silently down on the public area called Gallagher Way. I wondered what the players were thinking.
Down below an older gentleman, someone old enough to be their father, was being honored. This was the Ryne Sandberg statue ceremony Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. And — abruptly — there was Sandberg’s statue in front of all, unveiled with a small tornado of smoke and confetti.
The real Ryne Sandberg looked on, smiling, his white hair starting to flourish once again after his recent bout with prostate cancer. The statue captured the Hall of Fame second baseman in a defensive crouch, the way, he said, he wanted to be remembered.
There were times, we old scribes recalled, when the defensive crouch might have been an appropriate metaphor for Sandberg’s position with life. He was not comfortable with fame. As a player, he had little to say about himself, even after a mighty success such as the legendary 1984 ‘‘Sandberg Game.’’
That’s when he hit home runs in the ninth and 10th innings against the Cardinals to virtually will the Cubs to a 12-11 comeback victory. That TV ‘‘Game of the Week’’ was narrated by Bob Costas and broadcast to the entire country, etching the moment in history. Sandberg was only 24.
Back then when the press would enter the clubhouse after games, young ‘‘Ryno’’ was nervous. He was never discourteous. But he wasn’t introspective or colorful. He was wrapped in the purity of the game, as if it were a magic cloak and it transported him to another world. One that he could not explain or share.
When I mentioned to him after the ceremony that his statue has bulging biceps, the way he and his slender physique never did, he chuckled wholeheartedly. Nobody ever mentioned Sandberg as a steroid guy. Nobody ever questioned his dedication to playing hard and fair.
It was only happiness that seemed to be eluding him. He is a different person now. He has been through the fire — with his health, as a manager who resigned from a failing Phillies team in 2015, as a quiet person learning how much he is loved by many, by Cubs fans overwhelmingly.
He has been honored many times for his skills — nine consecutive Gold Gloves from 1983 to 1991, the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005. Personally, I love those 19 triples in 1984. And he has learned to accept what he means to so many people.
Steve Trout was the Cubs’ starting pitcher for that ‘‘Sandberg Game,’’ but the lefty was off his mark that day. Trout went 13-7 and pitched 190 innings for the Cubs in 1984, but the Cardinals got to him early.
“I set the table for Ryne,’’ Trout chuckled later. ‘‘If I’d pitched good, there never would have been a ‘Sandberg Game.’ Life is funny that way.’’
It is, indeed. The Cubs players watched as a man old enough to be their father, one they likely never saw play live, was honored. His bronze statue by sculptor Lou Cella now stands frozen alongside those of Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins, Billy Williams and Ron Santo. It’s an eerie, beautiful, mind-triggering pantheon. The stories of each man, well, they could fill five books, spark five miniseries.
Did you know, for instance, that Sandberg was a Parade All-America quarterback in high school? Or that he had signed to play football at Washington State before getting drafted by the Phillies?
Of his early demeanor, Sandberg has come to terms with all that.
“We are who we are, and that was me,’’ he told the crowd.
He was also the man who, in a public movie theater back in 1989, wept openly during ‘‘Field of Dreams.’’ Sobbed, even. Baseball is powerful that way. The connection of fathers and sons — and daughters, of course — the arc of the ball, the back and forth through the years, through the generations. It’s all there.
And I wondered what the 30 or so Cubs, up there observing, preparing to play the Mets, were thinking.
A whole lot, I’ll bet.