The initial scouting report on Ryne Sandberg was that he was too quiet and a little too stiff – and too accomplished at football to commit his full attention to baseball.

"Four thousand dollar ballplayer," was the bottom line of the Major League Scouting Bureau. "Unsignable."

Hmm. Wonder if that report will be part of Sandberg’s display in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

In the space of four years as the 1970s turned into the ’80s, three Spokane high schools within 40 blocks of one another launched graduates to the very pinnacle of American professional sports. The first to leave and the first to get there was Ryne Dee Sandberg, the painfully shy youngest son of a funeral director who would blossom into the finest second baseman of his – and perhaps any – era. And yet he almost wound up someplace else altogether.

Coming out of North Central High School in 1978, Sandberg was a gifted quarterback who seemed perfectly suited to run the wild and woolly option offense coach Jim Walden had unleashed at Washington State University. So it was no surprise when Sandberg signed a letter-of-intent to do just that.

Whatever baseball clubs hadn’t been turned off by the myopic scouting report should have been shooed away by that transaction, and most were. Come the June baseball draft, 19 rounds went by before the Philadelphia Phillies took a chance on Sandberg in the 20th. What made the Phillies different was a scout named Bill Harper who was completely sold on Sandberg and a bulldog, to boot.

"I went to a game of his one night," recalled Harper, who was still scouting the Northwest for the Phillies 20 years later. "I was just leaning against a light pole before the game when he came up to me and said, ’You know, there’s a possibility I might sign.‘ I just about fell over. And that night, when we went out to negotiate with him, it was the easiest sign I’d probably ever had."

It didn’t hurt that the Phillies gave their 20th-round pick second-round bonus money – in excess of $30,000. When Harper called his boss at 3 a.m. Philadelphia time with the news, there was a growl at the other end.

"Well," mumbled Dallas Green, "he better be able to play."

This was the same Dallas Green who would become general manager of the Chicago Cubs a few years later and swing a trade – Ivan DeJesus for Larry Bowa – that would include Ryne Sandberg as a virtual throw-in. The same Green who would install Sandberg as the Cubs’ starting third baseman in 1982 and move him to second base the next year. The same Green who would take bows in 1984 when Ryne Sandberg led the Cubs into post-season play for the first time in 39 years and was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player.

That season remains a statistical wonder. With one more triple and one more home run, Sandberg would have been the first player ever to have 20 doubles, triples, homers and stolen bases and 200 base hits. He would also lead all National League second basemen in fielding and win the Gold Glove – one of nine in his 16-year major league career.

When he left the game for good following the 1997 season, Sandberg was a 10-time All-Star, baseball’s all-time leader in home runs by a second baseman (277) and held the record for most consecutive errorless games by a second baseman (123) – just two cases of statistical confirmation that, as an all-around player, he was certainly Hall of Fame material.

"He’s the best player that I know in 42 years at his position," Cubs manager Don Zimmer said in 1990, when Sandberg led the N.L. with 40 home runs.

Born September 18, 1959, in Spokane, Ryne Sandberg – he was named after one-time major league pitcher Ryne Duren – always made it look easy athletically. Friends remember him tagging after his older brother, Del, to the NC field just two blocks from his home on West Augusta.

"The kids Del’s age accepted Ryne," said Dave Frigaard, who pitched on Sandberg’s North Central teams. "It’s one reason why he was so good so young. Ryne wound up being better than Del, which nobody figured at the time, because Del was awfully good."

But that no-sweat manner almost worked against him.

"He had a laid-back personality," said Harper, "and he wouldn’t always display the physical tools he really had until he had to."

Said Sandberg, "I’m me – I can’t be anyone else. I’m low-key. I take things in stride, the good and the bad. Whatever I did one year, I tried to improve on it the next year. I think baseball is about consistency more than it’s about doing something spectacular."

In Sandberg’s case, it was the consistency itself that became spectacular.

Yes, he would often sink into dreadful early season slumps, only to go on a tear in June and July and have his batting average near or above .300 by season’s end. That’s why it was such a shock in 1994 when, on June 13, he announced his immediate retirement from the game – walking away from a contract that still owed him more than $17 million.

At the time, Sandberg insisted he was "certainly not the type of person who can ask the Cubs organization and fans to pay my salary when I’m not happy with my mental approach and performance."

But it soon came to light that Sandberg’s marriage was falling apart – he and his wife, Cindy, would eventually divorce – and that he felt a strong emotional pull to spend more time with his children, Justin and Lindsey. In an autobiography published a year later, Sandberg also voiced uncharacteristic bitterness at the personnel decisions of general manager Larry Himes which "ripped the Cubs to shreds right before my eyes."

Himes was gone the following year, and the Cubs made a surprising run at the N.L. Central title. Sandberg’s personal life took a similar about-face – he married Margaret Koehnemann, a neighborhood friend, in August 1995. Urged by his family, Sandberg announced his un-retirement – and played two more seasons before hanging up his No. 23 for good.

In a different part of Chicago a year later, a different No. 23 would also retire for the second time. Michael Jordan’s merchandised the number. But not until Ryne Sandberg had broken it in.

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