Chicago, Illinois – In the golden light of a peaceful game day at Wrigley Field, the site of many of the Cubs’ greatest moments, the sound was not the sound of a bat hitting a ball, not the sound of a fan, but the slow, choked reading of a handwritten letter. The last birthday letter that Chicago Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg wrote to his beloved wife before his health took a serious turn for the worse due to cancer.
“If I am no longer here, I want my love to live on with the Cubs, with Wrigley, with you.”
The Sandberg family kept the letter hidden for months, because Sandberg himself said: “I don’t write for others to read. I just want you to know: when the whole world is silent, my heart still calls your name.” But as he entered his final years, Ryne asked his eldest son: “If there ever comes a day when I can no longer stand at Wrigley, let this letter be read. I want you to hear it from the place where my heart lives.”
And so it was – at the stadium where he had made more than 2,000 appearances, won nine Gold Gloves, and where every breeze seemed to carry the image of a gallant Sandberg in blue – the handwritten letter was placed next to his Cubs cap, and the reading began:
“My love,
Today is your birthday – a day that I always feel like the recipient of the greatest gift, simply because you chose to love me. Maybe someday the April winds will blow away everything we know. But love will not. It is here, inside me, in every moment Wrigley cheers…”
There was no applause when the letter ended. Just tears – from his wife sitting silently in the VIP seats, from his son standing next to him with a trembling hand holding the microphone, from the audience who could not contain their emotions.
A legend, a letter, and a fairy-tale farewell in the heart of the city
Ryne Sandberg was once considered the heart of the Cubs in the 1980s and 1990s. But today, he is remembered as a husband, a father – a man who chose the love of his life as the last part to tell the world.
The former player had been fighting a silent battle with prostate cancer for a long time. Despite aggressive treatment, his condition was deteriorating and his family began to publicly share his final journey.
Many fans, after hearing the letter, left Cubs hats, flowers and handwritten cards at the entrance to Wrigley Field. “We fell in love with Sandberg because of his legendary home run in 1984,” said a middle-aged fan named Gary. “But today, we fall in love with him because he taught us something bigger: how a man can love forever.”
The family said Ryne has started a charity in his wife’s name – to support couples whose loved ones have been diagnosed with cancer.
A tribute game called “The Last Letter Game” is scheduled to be held at Wrigley Field at the end of the season, where every spectator will be given a copy of the original handwritten letter – as a memento of a love that transcends time.
There are legends who live forever not because of their achievements – but because of the way they loved a single person… until the very end.