Sandberg: He’s a Bear of a Cub

Ernie Banks, baseball’s Bluebird of Happiness, was around the ballpark the other night and, as usual, everything was going to be all right. “You see that team over there?” Ernie asked, pointing to the other dugout. “That’s the Chicago Cubs, the greatest team in baseball. That’s my team. Aren’t you glad to be here and see the Chicago Cubs? Did you notice those uniforms? Red, white and blue! Does that tell you something? That’s America’s team! Right?”

Listening to Ernie, it was possible to look across the field and expect to see the 1927 Yankees instead of a team that has made an art form of futility and gone the longest of any established franchise in the major leagues without making the World Series--46 years. It’s not a team, it’s a hoodoo. Baseball’s Lost Battalion. Our very own French Foreign Legion.

You look at Ernie Banks and you marvel at his unsinkable loyalty to this collection of misfires. Ernie should be throwing tomatoes at Wrigley Field, mumbling in his beard at the bad luck that put him in a Cub uniform for 19 years. Ernie hit 512 home runs, drove in 1,636 runs, became Mr. Cub, Chicago’s most beloved ballplayer of all time--and never once got to run out on the field with a pennant winner in a fall classic.

It was eerie, but you couldn’t help but look from Ernie Banks over to the batting cage where his clone, a new “Mr. Cub,” wearing uniform No. 23, was standing, awaiting his turn at the plate.

Like Ernie Banks, Ryne Sandberg is a perfectly marvelous ballplayer, an infielder, a sure Hall of Famer. You have to go back to the likes of Rogers Hornsby, Frankie Frisch and Charlie Gehringer to find a more dangerous-hitting second baseman in the game. Last year, he hit 40 home runs to lead the league. He was only the third second baseman in history to hit 40 homers in a year.

He hasn’t played 19 years as Banks did, he has played 10. He won’t hit 512 homers. But he has 201 to date, which puts him on target to overtake Hornsby’s 263 and Joe Morgan’s 266, and make him the most prolific home run hitter among second basemen.

Like Banks, he has been the National League’s MVP, in 1984.

And like Banks, he has never been in a World Series. Because, like Banks, he is a Chicago Cub.

Like Banks, he is as taken-for-granted as sunrise. He is as matter-of-fact as a bank statement. He gets just more publicity than an usher. His bat and glove do the talking. When they put Sandberg on the cover of the team’s press guide this year, a lot of people were getting their first closeup of him. If he didn’t wear a number, he’d be anonymous.

He is a manager’s dream. Most stars with his statistics are as temperamental as the second act of “Carmen.” Sandberg acts more like a private first class than a bird colonel.

For years, the Cubs batted this offensive marvel in second spot in the order. His former manager, Don Zimmer, defended this gaffe by saying it was Sandberg’s wish.

Sandberg shook his head the other night when the question was put to him. “I bat wherever they tell me, wherever they want me,” he said. “I don’t tell the manager where to play me. I came up as a shortstop and when they moved me to second, I played second.”

No. 2 spot in the order is no place for a power hitter. It’s a place for a bat-manipulator, a guy who takes a lot of pitches to give the leadoff man a chance to steal, a guy who hits behind the runner a lot, even a bunter.

Ryne Sandberg, who led the majors in total bases last year and was second in slugging percentage, is no bunter. Neither is he your basic hit-behind-the-runner, move-the-baserunner-along type of hitter. He’s a clean-the-bases type of hitter is what he is, an outta-the-lot, three-run homer type of hitter. You bat a guy like him cleanup--or third or fifth. A spot where the bases might be loaded when he comes up.

Sandberg has more than 730 career runs batted in, remarkable for a man who ordinarily found his first at-bat with no one on or, at best, one on first base. New Manager Jim Essian has corrected this oversight. Ryne Sandberg now bats third. The Cubs now produce a mini-Murderers Row with Sandberg, Andre Dawson and George Bell in the middle of the lineup.

But Sandberg’s place in the order pales beside his place on the team that has become a symbol for flop in the grand old game.

Another great Chicagoan named Sandburg--the poet Carl, who spelled it a little differently--once called Chicago, “Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders.” He might also have noted it’s butcher to the National League, stacker of errors, city of the big ERA.

Unlike the past Mr. Cub, this one has an option. He can play without a contract and enter free agency next season. “It’s an option,” he acknowledged. “Everyone wants to play in a World Series.”

Ernie Banks, of course, could never understand that. Ernie sees the Cubs through a rose-colored haze of optimism. Why, Ernie believes, the Cubs could win the pennant again any century now. You just have to be patient.