The Franchise by Bruce Miles & Jesse Rogers

Author:Bruce Miles & Jesse Rogers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2023-03-11T07:59:18+00:00

9

The Ryno Trade

IF RYNE SANDBERG WAS A “THROW-IN,” HE WAS THE BEST “throw-in” in the history of Major League Baseball trades. Longtime fans of the Chicago Cubs can recite the trade by heart: on January 27, 1982, new Cubs general manager Dallas Green traded veteran shortstop Ivan DeJesus to the Philadelphia Phillies for firebrand shortstop Larry Bowa and an infield prospect named Ryne Sandberg, who had made his big league debut the previous September 2 in Atlanta and gotten his first hit against the Cubs at Wrigley Field on September 27.

DeJesus was a good-fielding shortstop who had been with mostly bad Cubs teams since 1977. Bowa, a member of the Phillies since 1970, was well known to Green, who managed the Phillies to a World Series title in 1980. Although Green was very familiar with Sandberg from his days in the Phillies front office, few in Chicago knew much about the quiet kid from Spokane, Washington. Writing about the trade in the Chicago Tribune, Jerome Holtzman observed: “The trade for quality shortstops had been in the works for more than a month but wasn’t consummated until the Phillies agreed to add Ryne Sandberg, a 22-year-old middle infielder with good speed and a light bat. From the beginning, the Cubs insisted there would be no deal unless Sandberg was included.”

Holtzman was known as the “dean” of Chicago baseball writers and he knew full well Sandberg was no throw-in. But others may be forgiven if they viewed Sandberg as something as afterthought. Years later, Sandberg is able to laugh at the notion that he was a throw-in. “Larry Bowa used to joke about me being a throw-in as he was the main player,” Sandberg said in 2022. “Ivan DeJesus was the other major leaguer at the time. I was just a minor league player. As I got to know Larry and be friends with him and start my career here, we’d do some things. He came up with the ‘throw-in’ line, which I kind of took and ran with from a veteran guy like him. But I think what happened there—I know what happened there—Dallas Green was the farm director in ’77 and ’78 for the Phillies. So he was scouting me and having me scouted by Bill Harper and Moose Johnson. When I was drafted by the Phillies in the 20th round, I had already committed to be a quarterback at Washington State University.”

Sandberg was part of something far larger that Green had in mind for awakening the slumbering giant that was the Chicago Cubs in 1981.

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During the summer of 1981, the Wrigley family sold the Chicago Cubs to the Tribune Co. for a reported $20.5 million ($21.1 million, including Wrigley Field). The Cubs were in the midst of strike-interrupted season, in which they would go 38–65. They had not been to the postseason since losing the 1945 World Series to the Detroit Tigers and were going nowhere fast.

On October 15, 1981, the Cubs introduced Dallas Green as their new general manager.

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