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Ryne Sandberg

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

Ryne Sandberg was born on September 18, 1959, in Spokane, Washington. Sandberg was 21 years old when he broke into the big leagues on September 2, 1981, with the Philadelphia Phillies. His height is six foot two inch with weight 180 pounds. Ryne Sandberg was came into his own in the Windy City in 1984, the classic baseball film The Natural was a hit as were the Cubs, played their way into the post-season for the first time since 1945. As a result, Chicago Cub fans knew Sandberg as Kid Natural before the name Ryno caught on. Sandberg quickly became their new champion a hard-working ballplayer who could do no wrong on the field.

Sandberg spent nearly three years in the Phillies' minor league organization as a shortstop and despite defensive struggles he quickly matured into a can't miss prospect. He proved to be a natural at the position, promptly winning the first of his nine Golden Gloves with a league leading 0.986 fielding percentage. But 1984 was his breakout season at the plate. Hitting 0.314 with 19 homers and 114 RBI for the division champs, Sandberg nearly became the first player in baseball history to rack up 200 hits and 20 doubles, triples, home runs, and steals in a single year.

In 1989 Sandberg hit 30 home runs for the first time in his career. The following year, he hit 40 the first time a second baseman had reached the 40-homer mark since Rogers Hornsby did it in 1922 and drove in a career high 116. He became the first player to have both a 40 homer season and a 50 stolen base season over the course of his career and one of a select few to reach 25 homers and 50 stolen bases in the same year. In 1994, at the age of 35, Sandberg announced his retirement from baseball.

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