CHICAGO — “What did Ryno mean to you?”
Late Tuesday afternoon, 670 The Score host Laurence Holmes began his show’s interview of Cubs legend Andre Dawson with that simple question about the late, great Ryne Sandberg. Dawson went quiet. He said he needed a minute to collect himself, and his silence spoke volumes. It was raw, uncomfortable radio.
“Ryno was everything to me,” Dawson said. “You’re talking about, right there at the top, one of my all-time favorite teammates. You know, he was like a brother.”
“What did Ryno mean to you?”
It was the same question I asked a 66-year-old Cubs fan named Jim Rodgers, who was standing by Sandberg’s statue outside of Wrigley Field earlier in the day.
“He meant everything,” said Rodgers, who drove down from suburban Round Lake because he hadn’t seen the statue in person since it was unveiled last summer. “MVP in ’84, how many gold gloves he had, he was one of the best.”
Dawson knew Sandberg intimately. Rodgers watched him on TV.
Sandberg, who passed away from prostate cancer on Monday, was different things to different people. To Cubs fans, he was a legend. That’s why they took pictures of the statue on Tuesday. That’s why they dropped off flowers and hats and jerseys. That’s why they’ve named their dogs and kids Ryne or Ryno over the last 40 years.
Fans began leaving mementos at Ryne Sandberg’s statue on Monday night. (Jon Greenberg / The Athletic)
To those who really knew Sandberg, he was a husband, a father, a teammate, a friend, a mentor, and yes, he was a hero to them too. But to those who knew him and to those who just worshipped him, it seems like Sandberg meant about the same. That is to say, everything.
For Ned Colletti, who would go on to a storybook career in baseball, Sandberg was his first up-close look at a baseball legend.
A few years after they both started working for the Cubs — Colletti in the media relations department and Sandberg in the middle infield — Colletti was sitting in the TV booth with NBC’s Bob Costas and Tony Kubek. It was June 23, 1984, and you know what happened next.
“From that moment on, I mean, it was like an explosion of interest in him,” Colletti said in a phone conversation from London, where he’s teaching a class for Pepperdine University. “I’m working in PR, so you know, you’ve got a lot of things to figure out, and he was a reluctant hero. He did whatever we asked him to do, but it wasn’t like he was seeking it out. ‘Hit me a thousand ground balls, I’d rather do that than stand in front of a microphone.’ But he made it to the All-Star Game. And from then on … he was terrific.”
To Colletti, a child of Chicago who grew up in the Wrigley Field bleachers, the impact Sandberg had on the team was immeasurable and he traces it all back to that moment in 1984 when Sandberg burst onto the national scene with two game-tying homers off Cardinals closer Bruce Sutter.
“I mean no exaggeration by this,” Colletti said. “I don’t know if one game has ever changed a career as much as that game did. But he just kept at it.”
Former Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti got his start in baseball with his hometown Cubs, just as Ryne Sandberg joined the club. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Colletti said he and Sandberg hit it off early and their friendship stayed strong even in the later years, when he changed jobs in the Cubs front office as he charted a path to being a general manager.
In the spring of 1992, Sandberg and the Cubs were working on a contract extension and Colletti was in the middle of some complicated negotiations between Sandberg and the Tribune Company. They wound up getting a deal done that made Sandberg the highest-paid player in baseball.
Colletti was fired by GM Larry Himes a few days after Christmas in 1993. The next year, Sandberg retired in mid-June. Colletti’s career then took off in San Francisco, and he eventually became the GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Sandberg, of course, returned to play baseball for two years before retiring for good. The two remained friends.
One night during the pandemic when everyone was home watching TV, Colletti flipped to MLB Network and found “The Sandberg Game.” He called up Sandberg and told him to turn it on.
“So we watched the rest of the game, going pitch by pitch. I mean, it was so much fun,” Colletti said. “He comes up against Sutter and I say, ‘I think this guy’s going to get him right here.’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know. He’s kind of a weak-hitting second baseman. What could he do against Bruce Sutter with that splitter?’”
For Darwin Barney, Sandberg was the mentor he needed in the minor leagues.
Sandberg was Barney’s first manager in Class-A Peoria in 2007. Sandberg managed him again in Double-A Tennessee in 2009 and once more in Triple-A Iowa in 2010. (He also was a hitting coach for Barney in the Arizona Fall League.)
Sandberg was new to coaching, let alone managing in 2007. And Barney could see the seams a little bit with how the Hall of Famer was adjusting to the role. Communication didn’t always come naturally, but passion did.
“As a manager, you could always see how baseball lit him up,” Barney said in a phone conversation Tuesday.
Darwin Barney learned how to play second base thanks to his minor-league manager, Ryne Sandberg. (Brian Kersey / Getty Images)
And that’s why Barney never got tired of moving up the ladder with Sandberg.
“I remember going into a season with him as my manager and I had weird feelings of wanting to go to battle for him,” Barney said. “Like excitement for the season to get to play for him. I would say it’s more of a college-type feeling of wanting to go to war with this guy. … So obviously, we had that relationship and I just always felt like he was in my corner.”
Never more so than in 2010, when the Cubs called up Starlin Castro from Double A to play shortstop. Barney, who was putting together a sterling season in Iowa, was obviously disappointed. And that’s when Sandberg took charge.
“Ryno came up to me and said we’re going to work at second base every day,” Barney said.
Barney still started at shortstop, but before every game, Sandberg drilled him at second until he got the hang of it. In mid-August, Barney made his big-league debut at second base.
People wondered why Sandberg went into managing. Was he bored? Was it ego? Maybe, but Barney thinks Sandberg just wanted to give something back to the game. And so he did.
In 2012, Barney won a Gold Glove at second base with the Cubs, just like Ryno.
“I felt like he was proud of what I accomplished, because he was a big part of that as well,” he said. “It’s hard to say I would have gotten where I got in my career without Ryne Sandberg.”
For Shawon Dunston, Sandberg was his polar opposite, and that was just what he needed.
“If I had a second baseman that played like me, we wouldn’t have gotten nothing done,” the former Cubs shortstop said in a phone conversation Tuesday.
Dunston was a mile-a-minute talker and an electric, sometimes erratic shortstop. Meanwhile, Sandberg was Sandberg.
“I had a Hall of Famer next to me and he didn’t talk much,” Dunston said. “He just told me certain things, what to do, what not to do. And he just delivered.”
When Dunston got the majors in 1985, he was already well-versed in what kind of player Sandberg was. After all, he got WGN-TV in Midland, Texas, and Des Moines, Iowa, the year before. In person, he quickly realized Sandberg was the real deal.
“When you have a superstar in Ryno that’s never bragging and acting like one of us, that’s very nice,” Dunston said. “It’s very comfortable to be around a guy like that.”
They formed an exciting double-play combination and even made the All-Star Game together in 1990 at Wrigley Field. When Sandberg upstaged the big boppers in the Home Run Derby, it was Dunston who was doing the bragging because it was his teammate. (Sandberg hit a whopping three home runs in a wind-ruined contest to beat Jose Canseco.) They wound up hitting 57 homers that season, a record for a Cubs double-play combination. Sandberg hit 40 of them.
“They used to tease me, ‘Shawon, come on now, you’ve got to swing it a little bit more,” Dunston said. “I said, I’m trying, but you know what, man, it’s OK, Ryne will take over.”
Dawson got to the Cubs in 1987, and Dunston found himself in the locker between two of the quietest stars in the game. The three became close friends, the kind that transcends clubhouses.
Mark Grace and Shawon Dunston surprise Ryno at spring training 💙 pic.twitter.com/ZorxVTVvfE
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) February 15, 2025
A little less than two weeks ago, they found themselves on a three-way phone call. Sandberg wanted to talk to them.
They knew he was suffering from prostate cancer, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He was asking them how they were doing. He wanted to know when the Cubs would induct Sammy Sosa and Derrek Lee into the team’s Hall of Fame. Dunston told him it would probably be in September.
“So he said, ‘Let’s get together then,’ and we spoke and spoke,” Dunston said. “And then he said, ‘The Cubs are on right now, so I’m gonna go watch the Cub game. Before I go, you guys take care. I love you like my brothers and I really appreciate you.’”
As they processed that, Sandberg’s daughter got on the phone and informed the two that her dad wasn’t going to make it to Wrigley again. He was going into hospice. This call was to say goodbye.
They were devastated then. They are devastated still.
Dunston said he talked more to Sandberg in the last three years than he did for the decade-plus they played together. Everyone noticed how Sandberg opened up as he got older and they all got a kick out of it.
But when Sandberg told Dunston and Dawson how much he cared about them, it surprised them, even if it shouldn’t have.
“Most of us men don’t know how to express ourselves to each other and say, ‘I love you,’” Dunston said. “It doesn’t sound right. But, you know, as the years go on, it sounds really good. I really appreciate he told me he loved me. I think that was more important he told me that than he loved being my teammate or double-play partner. That meant a lot to me.”
You could say it meant everything.
(Top photo: Jon Greenberg / The Athletic)
