I got the idea to visit the statue of Ryne Sandberg outside Wrigley Field this afternoon from my Instagram feed. Typing that sentence as a 58 year-old man makes me feel a weird combination of proud and shitty. That’s probably a topic for another essay.

They announced on last night’s Cubs’ game [an 8-4 loss to Milwaukee] that Sandberg had “lost his battle with cancer”. I wasn’t shocked. He had publicly disclosed earlier this year that the cancer he’d at least temporarily defeated a number of years ago was back and metastasized. I was surprised, though, by the “Big Feelings” that the news created for me.

I grew up a Chicago Cub fan in a small town in west-central Iowa. I don’t recall being coerced into it, but throughout my adulthood, I’ve referred to my Cubs’ affiliation as a “Family Curse”. My grandfather, who grew up on a dairy farm in eastern Iowa, could only get one team on the radio growing up. My dad, in an ill-fated attempt at teenage rebellion, claimed to become a St. Louis Cardinals fan at some point in the 1960’s, but by the mid-70’s (ie the point I reached sports fan sentience) he was safely back in the fold of the hapless Cubs.

We got cable tv sometime around 1981, which for a couple years just intensified the hopelessness by allowing us to watch the Cubs via WGN nearly every day of the summer. Despite the lack of winning in those years, it was somehow enjoyable for me to watch games, review the box scores the next day, and carefully follow the standings, actively constructing scenarios whereby the Cubs could somehow gain 10 games between Aug 1 and the beginning of the playoffs in late September.

In 1982, the Cubs traded for a young infielder from the Phillies named Ryne Sandberg. Soon after he arrived, Dad urged me to watch him play carefully. He was fascinated by Sandberg’s effortless athleticism as a “glove-first” third baseman (Sandberg moved to second base in 1983) who also occasionally showed signs of becoming a really good hitter.

In 1984, everything changed. I remember that summer as magical. I would turn 17 that fall. My friends and I had driver’s licenses and “jobs” in the sense that we had some spending money, but not in the sense of any real responsibility. My father was the high school football coach and my friends and I were all players on a team that we all felt was going to be pretty good. I had a girlfriend for the first time in my life. (Any/all of those are probably topics for other essays). More germane to this effort, for the first time since 1945 (when my father was one year old) the 1984 Chicago Cubs earned their way into playing postseason baseball. Ryne Sandberg was the National League’s Most Valuable Player.

For the next 10 years, Sandberg was the preeminent second baseman in baseball, combining graceful defense with a powerful bat that was, at that time, an unprecedented combination for a middle infielder. He won 10 straight Gold Glove Awards for fielding prowess and, in 1990, he led the National League with 40 home runs.

Somewhere in that same period, I literally grew from a boy to a man. My father had an affair with a woman with whom he worked and my parents were divorced. He no longer seemed to me to be the person with whom I listened to Cubs games on the porch in the summer of 1984.

I started thinking about all of this on the Red Line train I was taking up to Wrigley Field earlier this afternoon. I recalled the painful phone conversations I used to have with Dad somewhere in the early 1990’s. We weren’t really estranged. We continued to check in with each other by phone on a fairly regular basis. But the calls were, as my daughter might say today, “cringy”, and marked by prolonged silences. I recall at least one conversation during that time, though, when he broke the silence and asked me something like, “Did you see the play Sandberg made today?” I exhaled and the conversation flowed in a way it hadn’t for years and rarely would again.

At some point on the L-train ride to Wrigley, I realized that to this day, I associate Sandberg’s graceful play with Hemingway’s descriptions of bullfighters. Dad was also a high school English teacher and loved talking about Hemingway. I don’t recall him ever making the direct comparison, but I have a feeling he did.

Thinking about watching Sandberg play, as my father urged me to do in 1982, I realized that it wasn’t just his athleticism that was remarkable. It was also the level of respect that he afforded everyone. The fans, the media, his teammates, and even, perhaps especially, the opposition. It would be easy here for me to get on the grouchy-old-guy bus and wax poetic on how younger generations of athletes have diminished the game through self-promotion and all strains of made-for-tv antics. That would be pretty hypocritical of me. I actually enjoy watching authentic displays of emotion from athletes and generally, for me, that type of thing enhances, rather than detracts, from the enjoyment of watching them compete. I’d be lying though if I didn’t sometimes wonder— especially when I watch a clearly rehearsed “celebration” or a taunting act clearly aimed at demeaning an opponent— whether we as a society have lost something important since 1984, when Ryno used to scamper quickly around the bases after a home run with his head down unsuccessfully attempting to suppress a shy grin.

As the train pulled into the Addison station, and I saw the back corner of Wrigley Field gleaming in the hot late-July sun, I felt the familiar sense of excitement disembarking at this station. I recalled what Cubs President Jed Hoyer said last week while being interviewed during a Cubs broadcast. In retrospect, Hoyer clearly knew that Sandberg was dying, and was probably hoping that the Cubs legend was watching. Hoyer was welcomed into the broadcast booth to answer softball questions about the upcoming trade deadline from the Cubs’ broadcast team. Before answering any questions, he began by talking, as Cubs executives often do, about the amazing energy that fans bring to Wrigley Field on game day. He went on to make a point that I had never thought of, although I believe it’s probably true. That “vibe” (or at least the version of it with which I’m familiar) started in the summer of 1984 and Ryne Sandberg is probably more responsible than any other individual for creating it.

Even in the mid-90’s heat, I quickly covered the ground between the station and the plaza on the far side of the old ballpark where Ryne Sandberg’s statue stands next to other Cubs legends like Ron Santo, Billy Williams and Ernie Banks. The Cubs had set up an impromptu shrine under the statue with a large “23” marker and a nice roped-off ground-covering where people were laying flowers, teddy bears and cards. I sat in a folding chair next to a table under an umbrella and watched the surprisingly diverse group of people passing through the scorching plaza and pausing in front of the statue. Soon, I felt the renewed energy you get following a good cry and I realized that although the event itself was sad, what I was feeling in that moment was intense connection with everyone around me and intense gratitude.

I’m grateful I got to see Sandberg play in his prime and that period overlapped with such an important and formative period in my life.

As cringy as they were, I’m grateful for those awkward adult conversations with my dad and that we both continued to put in the effort. I can’t say that he ever regained the status I afforded him as a kid, but I grew to understand and appreciate him, as flawed as he was. When he died over a decade ago, he knew I loved him.

I’m grateful for Wrigley Field and what my young adult daughter, who loves going there, refers to as “the vibe”, which thanks to Jed Hoyer, I now realize was at least partially generated by Ryne Sandberg.