Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball.
It was glimmering out there for Ryne Sandberg, the same destination for a very different test of endurance and will. He had made it to Cooperstown as a player. Now, he wanted to make it as a cancer patient on the way to recovery.
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And he did. Sandberg was one of the 14 Hall of Famers who gathered last Saturday at Doubleday Field for the East-West Classic, a recreation of the old Negro Leagues All-Star Game. He didn’t play, but he won.
“The timing was good for this trip, so I had this on the calendar, kind of penciled in,” Sandberg said behind the batting cage before the game. “Then I got good news last week, so it freed me up to come up here. And this is a well-needed getaway. This is a special place to come anyway, and my wife also needed a break; she’s had her hands full as well. We always love coming here.”
Sandberg, 64, announced on Jan. 22 that he had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. In the four months since, he has chronicled his ordeal on Instagram, posting messages through six rounds of chemotherapy.
In a post last week, Sandberg revealed that PET and MRI scans on May 20 revealed “NO detection of Cancer!” He said he would soon begin several weeks of radiation treatment and that while some daily symptoms remained, he was having “semi normal good days” and felt blessed and grateful.
View this post on Instagram
“It’s a battle and it changes your whole life and your calendar for that year or more — for the rest of your life,” Sandberg said. “So I have an appreciation for that, and also I have a mentality to not take anything for granted and enjoy everything in life — the day-to-day, basic things and the little things that I enjoy. I maybe appreciate and enjoy those moments a little bit more.”
Sandberg — who made 10 All-Star teams in a row from 1984 to 1993 as the Chicago Cubs’ second baseman — threw out the first pitch in Chicago on opening day. (He bounced it due to double vision, he said.) Another honor awaits.
On June 23, the Cubs will unveil a statue of Sandberg outside Wrigley Field. The date marks the 40th anniversary of a breakout performance so renowned that it has its own Wikipedia page: The Sandberg Game.
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Facing the rival St. Louis Cardinals on that golden Saturday in 1984 — before 38,079 fans on the North Side and a national TV audience on NBC’s “Game of the Week” – Sandberg went 5 for 6 with seven runs batted in. He belted game-tying homers off another future Hall of Famer, Bruce Sutter, in both the ninth and 10th innings.
The Cubs won in 11 innings, 12-11, and by the end of the month they had risen to first place in the National League East. They finished on top for their first postseason berth since 1945, and Sandberg was named NL Most Valuable Player.
The game — called by Bob Costas, who will introduce Sandberg at the statue unveiling — gave Sandberg a new self-image. A 20th-round draft pick who’d been traded away by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1982 after one career hit, he welcomed the responsibilities of stardom.
“It changed my whole career, really got me on the map,” Sandberg said. “And it was very much a team thing, because the rest of the season, after the All-Star break, Wrigley Field was sold out, which you didn’t see in ’82 and ’83, my first two years.
“And then being so young — I was just 24 years old when all that happened, and that was kind of my new standard for my remaining years, which was 13 more years. So you got the whole thing: MVP-type seasons, silver bats and Gold Gloves, getting to the playoffs and World Series, those were all goals and they all happened, or got a taste of it, in ’84.”
The Cubs fell just short of the World Series, dropping a heartbreaking NL Championship Series to San Diego. But Sandberg’s steady, all-around excellence at second base earned him a plaque at the Hall in 2005 and a strong support network for the fight of his life.
“I have so much appreciation for my former teammates and the baseball world, the baseball fans, the Hall of Fame members, neighbors, friends, everybody that reached out with good wishes,” Sandberg said. “It was off-the-charts incredible.”
Gimme Five
Five bits of ballpark wisdom
Jason Benetti on what it was like to call a game with Bill Walton
When Bill Walton died on Monday, at age 71, he left behind much more than a Hall of Fame basketball legacy. For one rollicking, riveting, raucous night, Walton was also the most entertaining baseball analyst ever.
You may have seen clips this week of Walton’s three-hour tour in the Chicago White Sox booth on Aug. 16, 2019, for a game in Anaheim against the Los Angeles Angels. Jason Benetti, the play-by-play man, had worked basketball games with Walton but never embarked on a trip quite like this.
“He’s my freaking hero,” said Benetti, now the TV voice of the Detroit Tigers. “I adored working with him. He just changed the whole idea of what calling games is. You could go anywhere, and he would take you anywhere. And I know nobody else like that.”
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In the White Sox’ 7-2 win that night, Walton took viewers to a place they’d never explored before, tuning his inimitable brain frequency to all things baseball. For Benetti, who has cerebral palsy, the broadcast encapsulated everything he admired and loved about his friend.
“I am really glad the Earth got him,” Benetti said. “I really am.”
Here are five of Benetti’s memories from the only time he called baseball while wearing matching tie-dye T-shirts with a hardwood legend.
Walton was a master motivator: “We go into the clubhouse and Bill gives this rousing speech for 15 minutes about John Wooden and pillars of teamwork and his own battles with physical issues and depression and how to really be a team. It was powerful. And I’m not exaggerating: (then-manager) Ricky Renteria came up to me and said, ‘Can we get him back to talk to us again down the line?’ He was talking about it for days. He was just that good.”
Don’t try to tame Robin Williams: “Bill taught me always, in his actions, that you don’t have to do anything. And I imagine, based on the stories I have heard and read, it’s kind of like doing improv with Robin Williams. Like Robin would show up at Second City and he would be the centerpiece of those scenes. And because the rules of improv dictate that you do this or you do that to make sure the scene is funny, it could be frustrating to do improv with Robin because he’s breaking conventions – even though he’s ridiculously funny, it’s hard to follow. So if you say to yourself, ‘The conventions don’t apply, let’s just go,’ then whatever happens is the art of it. And it’s the height of curiosity, because he doesn’t care what happens. He just wants to know more about what’s in front of him.”
Wonder and wisdom make a powerful blend: “The reason it’s so fun to talk to kids is because they just want to know more about the world. And Bill was not an infant in intelligence; he was a phenomenal chess player and a brilliant basketball player. But he somehow matured in his knowledge while also keeping that childlike curiosity — that completely unfettered, want-to-know that made him such a perfect partner and a perfect friend. He just wanted to have the world be more vivid to him.”
The postgame interview doesn’t have to be routine: “Bill had this way of breaking everything down to its component parts and asking about details that are just beyond what anybody ever would ask. The James McCann postgame interview, when he asked about what eye black is, was amazing. And I’m sure there are kids out there that have no idea. I would never ask that in my quote-unquote ‘stodgy’ role as a play-by-play announcer — unless Bill was around. And now, because Bill was in my life, there’s a level of curiosity that we’re all allowed to have and to share.”
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Celebrating differences can be inspirational: “He was different and he was willingly different and he celebrated difference. And I haven’t run into somebody who embodies it quite like that, and I never will again, because he gave me license to be me. All I’ve ever wanted is for people to understand that there’s something beyond the first thing you see. And Bill was tie-dye and Grateful Dead and people would viciously say on social media, ‘Why doesn’t he focus on the game? What is he doing?’ And the answer was, he’s doing something that we haven’t seen before. And for someone who grew up different, like me, I could watch five million public service announcements, I could watch five million afterschool specials, I could read five million books about being different and not get the same impact as that one man had on me, simply by just being willing to be you — wholly and completely and unabashedly you — and just do whatever your heart said. And that’s not just going to be enough — it’s going to be beautiful.”
Alien sighting in D.C.
In certifying Negro League statistics as part of the official record this week, MLB added some elite nicknames to the all-time leaderboards. Turkey Stearnes now ranks sixth on the career batting average list at .348, and Mule Suttles sits fifth in slugging percentage at .621. They’re both on the career OPS leaderboard, with Stearnes in ninth at 1.033, and Suttles behind him at 1.031.
Nicknames were part of the lore of the Negro Leagues, of course, with Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Bullet Rogan, Double Duty Radcliffe and many more. And while that may have been the heyday for colorful names, there are still a few today: Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners is The Big Dumper, for his plus-size posterior; Triston McKenzie of the Cleveland Guardians is Dr. Sticks, for his interest in medicine and his reedy frame; Pete Alonso of the New York Mets is the Polar Bear, for his ursine build.
Our favorite, though, is right there on the otherworldly diamond pendant around the neck of C.J. Abrams, the Washington Nationals’ shortstop: The Alien.
CJ Abrams' alien chain is tough 😤 pic.twitter.com/7uy9rA0DzP
— MLB Life (@MLBLife) July 17, 2023
Abrams, 23, is actually from Roswell — alas, not Roswell, N.M., home of UFO conspiracy theories for decades, but Roswell, Ga. He got the nickname there as a youth football star.
“One of my coaches used to call me The Alien, because I was skinny, fast, big head,” Abrams said recently before a game in Philadelphia. “I just looked like an alien. I ran with it. It’s just different, like a (talent) not-from-here type of thing.”
Abrams, who came to the Nationals from San Diego in the 2022 Juan Soto trade, came into his own in the second half of last season, with an MLB-best 36 stolen bases from July 7 through the end of the year. He finished with 47, a record for the franchise since it moved from Montreal in 2005.
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This year has been slower on the bases for Abrams, who had just eight steals through Thursday, but he’s improved his batting average, on-base and slugging percentages, to .254/.300/.465, making good on the promise he showed before the deal.
“You could tell he still possessed all the tools you need in an impact shortstop in the big leagues, but since we got him, he’s impressed us even more,” general manager Mike Rizzo said. “The way he’s taken to the routines of the big leagues, he’s really been a young leader on another one of the younger teams, and a guy whose presence on this team is as important to us as his skill set.”
Rizzo would not comment on the possibility of signing Abrams to a long-term contract, but said he’s “become a fixture” in Washington. Abrams said he was focused on the moment: “I keep my head in today, where my feet are. So whatever happens, happens.”
Meanwhile, he said, he’s trying to emphasize selectivity at the plate to increase his chances of hard contact. He’s about league average for exit velocity, but has gotten progressively better each season — while continuing to build his social media profile with alien-themed content.
“There’s me on a baseball field, I’m looking in the mirror and the mirror shows an alien,” he said, describing a recent post on X. “I thought it was cool. More is coming, so stay tuned.”
— CJ Abrams 👽 (@CJAbrams01) May 13, 2024
Off The Grid
A historical detour from The Immaculate Grid
Bob Welch, Cy Young winner, Athletics
The Grid asked for an Oakland A’s Cy Young winner on Wednesday, which allowed for just five possible answers: reliever Dennis Eckersley and four big winners: Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Bob Welch and Barry Zito. Each of those starters had at least 23 wins in his Cy Young season, but Welch had the most, with 27 in 1990.
Even understanding the capricious nature of win-loss records, Welch’s 27-6 mark is astounding. Only three other pitchers in the expansion era (since 1961) have had 27 wins in a season: the Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax (27 in 1966) and Steve Carlton (27 in 1972), and Denny McLain, who won 31 in 1968.
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Yet just as McLain was upstaged by a teammate in his miracle season — Mickey Lolich was the World Series MVP with three victories — Welch was in no way the ace of the A’s. Dave Stewart started the opening games of the American League Championship Series and World Series that fall after going 22-11 with a better ERA than Welch (2.56 to 2.95) in a major-league-high 267 innings.
What’s really crazy is that Welch won the Cy Young while somehow finishing behind two fellow Oakland pitchers in AL MVP voting.
Teammate Rickey Henderson won the award, with closer Dennis Eckersley placing sixth and Stewart eighth. Welch, who was ninth in MVP voting, collected 15 of the 28 first-place votes for the Cy, with eight going to Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox, three to Stewart and two to Bobby Thigpen of the White Sox, who had amassed a then-record 57 saves.
Late in his career, Clemens told me that 1990 was his best season — and, indeed, his 10.4 bWAR for that year is his second-best, eclipsed only by his 1997 season with Toronto. But Clemens pitched only once after Sept. 4 in 1990 because of a shoulder problem, and while he still pitched a stout 228 1/3 innings for a division winner, the injury cost him dearly with voters.
Not that Clemens (who was 21-6 with a 1.93 ERA) was lacking for honors. He would win seven Cy Young Awards, the most in major-league history. Welch won just one, the highlight of an underrated 17-year career.
Classic Clip
Hank Aaron on “Happy Days” in 1980
If you’re at the Brewers game in Milwaukee on Friday, be warned: You just might bump into a Bronze Fonz on your way to the bratwurst stand.
The Brewers are holding “Happy Days Night” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the sitcom, which was set in Milwaukee and ran from 1974 to 1984. They’re giving away a “Bronze Fonz” bobblehead as part of a ticket package and promising an “immersive Happy Days experience” that includes a bronze Fonz — like the downtown statue — roaming the terrace level and a pregame 1950s hot rod car show (weather permitting) in the plaza.
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Since “Happy Days” was set in the ’50s, the show once featured Hank Aaron, a star of the Milwaukee Braves, playing a younger version of himself. Aaron appeared in an episode that ran on Feb. 5, 1980, his 46th birthday. He’d been retired for three seasons by then, but still looks like he could swat a few homers.
“Don’t I always?” he says.
(Top photo of Ryne Sandberg (right, with LaTroy Hawkins) at the East-West Classic: Milo Stewart Jr. / National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)