Description

Ryne Sandberg's road to Wrigley Field started almost by accident. Philadelphia took him in the twentieth round of the 1978 draft, and he arrived in the majors as a September call-up in 1981, playing shortstop behind a young Phillies infield that had no room for him long-term. That offseason, with Mike Schmidt entrenched at third, Philadelphia traded Sandberg and Larry Bowa to the Cubs for Iván DeJesús — a deal completed only because Cubs GM Dallas Green, who had managed Sandberg in Philadelphia, insisted on including him. In Chicago, Sandberg settled in at third base for his rookie year of 1982, hitting .271 with 33 doubles and 32 stolen bases, good for sixth in the NL Rookie of the Year vote. After the Phillies traded him to the Chicago Cubs before the 1982 season, future Hall-of-Fame infielder Ryne Sandberg moved from shortstop to third base, and with one month left in the season, manager Lee Elia moved him again, this time to second base. The full switch came in 1983, a season the Cubs finished 71-91 and best remembered for a profane Lee Elia tirade at Wrigley Field fans — not for anything Sandberg did at the plate, where he hit a modest .261. But in the field, in his first full year at a brand-new position, he led all NL second basemen in double plays and began a run of nine consecutive Gold Gloves that would define his career defensively. The breakthrough came the next year. Before the 1984 season, Cubs manager Jim Frey challenged his athletic ex-quarterback in spring training, asking how he wasn't more of a power hitter, and Sandberg began pulling inside pitches for home runs and transformed his game. On June 23, 1984, in a nationally televised game against St. Louis, Sandberg hit a game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth against future Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter, then hit another home run in the bottom of the 10th, a two-run shot off Sutter, to force an 11th inning the Cubs went on to win. The performance turned him into a national name, and he closed the year batting .314 with a league-leading 19 triples, winning the NL MVP award and leading the Cubs to their first postseason appearance since 1945. The rest of the career built on that foundation without ever delivering a World Series — Sandberg spent virtually his entire sixteen years in a Cubs uniform, reaching the playoffs only twice. He kept adding to his defensive legend, once going 123 consecutive games without an error to break Joe Morgan's record, and in 1990 became the first second baseman since Rogers Hornsby to lead the league in home runs, hitting 40. He retired with 2,386 hits, 282 home runs, 344 stolen bases, a .285 average, ten All-Star selections, nine Gold Gloves and seven Silver Sluggers, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2005 on his third ballot with 76.2% of the vote. This card is Sandberg's true rookie issue, one of three future Hall of Famers — alongside Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn — who made their Fleer debut in the 1983 set, a trio that has kept an otherwise plain, beige-bordered design relevant to collectors for four decades. It pictures him in the Cubs' pinstriped uniform at bat, from the very season, 1983, in which he shifted to second base and won the first of his nine straight Gold Gloves — the year before the power and the MVP arrived.