Ryne Sandberg’s Phillies legacy takes a couple of turns. They drafted him, traded him minutes later for Ivan DeJesus, watched him develop from afar into the league’s premiere slugging second baseman, brought him back as a coach decades later, promoted him to manager, watched him try to manage the team without speaking to them, and accepted his abrupt and quite welcome resignation.
For a minute, it was hoped that perhaps Sandberg would turn out to be so brilliant a manager that the Phillies having him for that chapter of his career would somehow make up for missing out on the part of it in which he was a ten-time all-star, 11-time Gold Glover, eight-time Silver Slugger, and National League MVP.