Homer History: Ryne Sandberg takes Bruce Sutter deep twice
In our Homer History series, writers re-tell the stories of memorable home runs from their perspective. In this installment, Big League Stew blogger Kyle Ringo tells the tale of Ryne Sandberg coming through against a tough closer.
My first love was baseball. I spent hours in my backyard as a boy throwing the ball with my dad or pretending to be some Gold Glove winner robbing a power hitter of a crucial hit in a pivotal game.
I would look forward to my team’s Little League practices and games each week and if I was lucky I could occasionally catch a few innings and maybe an entire game on television on the weekend. If I was really lucky, my favorite team might be playing, but it didn’t happen often because the Chicago Cubs weren’t very good and back then our family didn’t have cable or satellite.
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Yep, the stone age.
All these years later, I still couldn’t tell you how or why Ivan de Jesus came to be my favorite player and the guy I most often pretended to be while throwing the ball high in the air or against the brick wall of my house and then catching it. I think I chose de Jesus because he played shortstop, a position I generally regarded among the most important on the field even though I was a catcher. Plus, he played for the Cubs.
So it is with all that in mind that I can admit, I hadn’t fully embraced Ryne Sandberg as a member of the team I loved by 1984. It was his third year with the club after being traded by Philadelphia to the Cubs in 1982 as the other player included in a deal that sent de Jesus to the Phillies for shortstop Larry Bowa.
When the 1984 season started, I still held a little grudge about my favorite player being traded more than two years earlier, but by the end of that season, I loved Sandberg, my grandfather and uncles loved Sandberg, and they played a big part why I was a fan of the team in the first place. Every Cubs fan loved Sandberg.
What he did on June 23, 1984 won me over once and for all, though winning the National League MVP and leading the Cubs to the playoffs at long last helped, too.
Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals fans alike remember that day and the game at Wrigley Field as ‘The Sandberg Game” because what Chicago’s young second baseman did needed to be called something beyond tremendous, amazing or unbelievable.
Sandberg went five-for-six with two home runs and seven RBIs. It was a stellar statistical line for any player in any game, but the fashion in which he hit the two home runs made it truly unforgettable.
Chicago rallied from down 7-1 and later 9-3 after Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee hit a two-run home run. He was prematurely named the player of the game in the ninth inning, but understandably so because he had three hits and five RBI at that point.
Sandberg came to the plate to lead off the bottom of the ninth with the Cubs trailing 9-8 facing future Hall of Fame pitcher Bruce Sutter, who had been almost unhitable. Sandberg was hitting .327 going into that at-bat but was just 2-for-12 against Sutter to that point in his career. He smacked a 1-1 pitch to the last row of the left field bleachers sending hundreds of bleacher bums with their shirts off and thousands of other Cubs fans into delirium.
[Homer History: Alex Gordon ties up Game 1 of the 2015 World Series in the ninth inning]
“Holy Cow. The game is tied. The game is tied,” shouted Harry Caray on the Cubs’ radio broadcast. “Ryne Sandberg did it.”
Wrigley Field was in such a frenzy, the roar from Sandberg’s eighth home run of the season still hadn’t died when Gary Matthews hit the first pitch of the next at-bat into left field. Chicago ultimately failed to score the winning run in the ninth and the game went to extra innings.
McGee came up in the 10th inning facing Lee Smith with Ozzie Smith on base. McGee doubled, driving in Smith and becoming the first Cardinal to hit for the cycle since Lou Brock in 1975. McGee later scored giving him four hits in six at-bats with six RBI and three runs scored in the game.
He would have owned the highlights and headlines on almost any other day and any other game.
The Cubs needed a miracle in the bottom of the 10th trailing by two with Sutter still in the game. Bowa and Richie Hebner both grounded out to start the inning. Outfielder Rob Dernier somehow worked one of his 63 walks that season off of Sutter, who walked only 23 batters all year. Dernier’s effort has probably gone under appreciated all these years. He did his job by getting Sandberg to the plate again.
One home run had seemed too much to ask only minutes earlier in the ninth inning. Now a second home run, especially against Sutter even though he was pitching his third inning at that point, seemed oddly possible because of what already transpired.
With the count 1-1 once again, Sandberg saw another pitch he liked and belted it to the same area high up in the left field bleachers. Sutter, like everyone else in the stadium and watching on television around the nation, couldn’t believe it. An outing like that would have spoiled some pitchers for days or even longer. Sutter finished the season with a 1.54 ERA in 122 2/3 innings and was third in the Cy Young voting but that day in June might be what is remembered most.
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The Cubs eventually won the game in the 11th inning when pinch hitter Dave Owen drove in Leon Durham, who had walked. The ball rolled into right-center field and the Cardinals just left it there as they trotted to the dugout in what must have been disbelief.
While Sandberg’s major league career had started three years earlier, his track to the Hall of Fame probably started that day when he made a name for himself with the eyes of the nation watching in a pressure situation against a dominant pitcher. His home runs didn’t win a world title or even a playoff game, but they did win the hearts of thousands of Cubs fans near and far, including a kid in Colorado who had found a new favorite player.
COMING SUNDAY: Hank Aaron hits No. 715.
PREVIOUSLY IN HOMER HISTORY
– The night a hobbled Kirk Gibson broke my heart (by Mike Oz)
– Cal Ripken Jr. wowed us yet again on Iron Man night (by Lauren Shehadi)
– When Albert Pujols silenced Minute Maid Park (by Jeff Passan)
– Bill Mazeroski’s great walk-off World Series winner (by Kevin Iole)
– The Big Papi grand slam that still haunts Detroit (by Al Toby)
– That time Joe Blanton hit a home run in the World Series (by Sam Cooper)
– When Jim Leyritz halted hopes of a Braves dynasty (by Jay Busbee)
– Bryce Harper and the home run almost no one saw (by Chris Cwik)
– Shane Robinson and the home run on one predicted (by Tim Brown)
– The shot heard ’round the world (by Larry King)
– The night Reggie Jackson became Mr. October (by Scott Pianowski)
– Tony Fernandez’s extra-innings postseason blast (by Joey Gulino)
– Dave Kingman takes one out of Wrigley Field (by Andy Behrens)
– Joe Carter’s blast wins the 1993 World Series (by Greg Wyshynski)
– Todd Helton ignites a historic Rockies run (by Mark Townsend)
– David Eckstein once again does the improbable (by Max Thompson)
– Bob Brenly makes up for four errors with a blast (by Rob Schneider)
– Alex Gordon ties Game 1 of the 2015 World Series (by Nick Bromberg)
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