The Man Who Changed the Cubs

On August 9, 1959, a man named Sandy and his wife, Libby, were in their home in Spokane listening to a baseball game on the radio between the New York Yankees and Kansas City Athletics. The Yankees were playing poorly that season, their worst baseball since the war, and true to form, they fell behind 3-0 early. But they clawed back and tied the game in the bottom of the eighth.

In the ninth, the Yankees sent in their mercurial reliever Ryne Duren. Nobody threw harder than Duren — perhaps no one ever. But he could barely see, even when wearing thick glasses, and his career was a long series of walks, wild pitches, hit batters, and late nights. “I never really knew what it was like to pitch a sober inning,” he said years later after becoming an addiction counselor. He never could quite harness that magical fastball.

But he did on that August day. Duren came into the game in the ninth with the score tied and tossed six scoreless innings. He struck out six Athletics (including the young Roger Maris twice). The Yankees finally scored a run in the 15th to win it.

In Spokane, Sandy and Libby listened in admiration.

“Ryne,” Sandy said. “That’s a good name.”

Exactly 40 days later, their second son was born. They named him Ryne Sandberg.

Ryne Sandberg was not the best baseball prospect on his own high school baseball team. North Central had a power-hitting catcher named Chris Henry, and scouts came from all over to see him, and when they saw Sandberg play, they thought, “Decent talent. What a shame.” Sandberg had already signed with Washington State to play quarterback. He was a Parade All-American football player.

But one scout knew better. Bill Harper was a longtime Oregon high school baseball coach and relatively new Philadelphia Phillies scout … and when he watched Sandberg play ball, he just knew — knew it in his soul — that the kid’s true love was baseball.

Bill Harper knew it even before Ryne Sandberg did.

“The only guy I ever talked to who knew Ryne would be a star was Bill Harper,” Sandberg’s North Central coach Ken Eilmes told the local paper. “Bill told me, ‘I’ve dreamed of signing a kid like this. He can do it all.’”

Harper shared his grand vision with the Sandberg family. He mostly drew resistance. Sandy and Libby may have named him Ryne, but they wanted him to go to college. The one member of the Sandberg family who seemed responsive was Ryne’s older brother Del, a high school coach and the man who taught Ryne Sandberg how to play baseball.

Del Sandberg, incidentally, was named for longtime Phillies star Del Ennis.

Harper was able to convince the Phillies to spend a 20th-round pick on Sandberg. And he was able to convince the Phillies’ West Coast supervisor, Moose Johnson, to give him 30 grand for the signing.

“This is high round money,” Harper told the family. Del and Ryne went outside to discuss the deal. Through the window, Harper watched the brothers shoot a few baskets on the backyard rim. He watched Ryne throw down a couple of dunks, displaying the exact sort of easy athleticism that had left him breathless in the first place. He whispered a small prayer.

The boys came in a few minutes later and accepted the deal.

“How much did you give him?” the Phillies director of scouting Dallas Green asked.

“Thirty thousand,” Harper said meekly.

“All I can say,” Green barked, “is he better be able to play.”