“When I can’t stand on the field anymore, I can sit down and write what I need to say to people who are hurting like me.” – Ryne Sandberg
Chicago – The white hospital room on the fourth floor of the Northwestern Cancer Center is quiet on a hot summer afternoon. On the small table next to the bed, there are handwritten letters, written in bold, shaky ink. Each letter is a stream of emotion, a word of comfort, a little hope. The writer: Ryne Sandberg, the living legend of the Chicago Cubs, is battling terminal prostate cancer.
And the recipients… are families in Texas – where children have never returned from a camping trip swept away by floodwaters.
A few weeks ago, Sandberg read the news about the flash floods at Camp Mystic, where many girls died when the raging waters suddenly swept through the camp. He shed tears. But not just tears.
Despite being under chemotherapy and not having the strength to leave his hospital room, Ryne Sandberg asked the nurse to bring him handwritten notes, envelopes, and pens. Over the course of three days, he wrote more than 20 handwritten letters to each of the victims’ families – people who were experiencing immense pain and loss.
“I can’t bring your children back. But I can remember them with you – the way a coach remembers the names of each child he has taught.”
In each letter, Sandberg did not write like a celebrity.
He wrote like a father, a grandfather, a man who had fallen and gotten up many times. He quoted small passages from his personal diary, telling about a summer when he was 8 years old and almost drowned in Lake Michigan, or the feeling of losing his father in an accident when he was 12 years old.
“The pain doesn’t go away. But it transforms. It becomes the tenderness you feel when you see another child smile. It becomes the reason you don’t fall apart.
And most of all… it becomes a light in your heart – so that those who are gone are never truly gone.”
Excerpt from Ryne Sandberg’s letter to the family of Grace L.
When the families of the victims began receiving the letters, they had no idea who the sender was – until they saw the signature at the bottom:
“With all my love and respect, Ryne Sandberg – #23”
One mother shared on social media:
“I’ve never watched baseball. But today I learned the most important thing: you don’t have to know someone to love them.”
Because the most important things can still be written from a sickbed
When asked why she did this while she was in pain, Sandberg replied in a brief interview:
“I can’t run charities anymore. I can’t go to Texas to help. But I can do what I’ve always believed in: write the pain – so it doesn’t swallow someone up in silence.”
A letter, a delicate touch between two broken worlds
Ryne Sandberg’s story is not in the statistics or the Hall of Fame.
It’s in the trembling ink, the words written from a heart that’s slowly weakening – but never cold.
“If you’re reading this, please know: I’m thinking of you. Not as a fan. But as a friend – sitting with you in the dark, waiting for the dawn.”
— Ryne Sandberg
Baseball is sometimes about hitting historic home runs. But today, it’s about a man lying in a hospital bed… reaching out to broken hearts. This is the greatest legacy of a legend.