Ryne Sandberg appears anxious to play a little golf and as ready as ever to play a lot of baseball for the Cubs again.
But he admits to feeling certain anxieties.
”Yeah,” the all-world second baseman says, ”I`m a little frustrated.”
Sandberg read that Roger Clemens, the Boston Red Sox ace right-hander, signed a four-year contract extension worth $21.5 million. His salary will average out to $5,380,250 through 1995, and nobody in baseball will earn more. Jose Canseco of Oakland has a $23.5 million five-year contract that will reward him with $5.1 million in 1995, slightly above what Darryl Strawberry will earn that same season from the Los Angeles Dodgers. There are a number of other players in the $3 million-plus-per-annum fraternity, including Andre Dawson of the Cubs and Tim Raines of the White Sox.
Sandberg, who is as modest as his accomplishments are loud, believes he should be mentioned on the same page or same paragraph as the aforementioned luminaries. At present, however, he is not even in the same book. He has two years left with the Cubs for a total of about $4.3 million. He knows he`s worth infinitely more and has been told so. By the Cubs.
”On a trip out this way last year, they told me they wanted to make an adjustment in my contract,” Sandberg says. ”They came to me. They suggested we start talking, which was fine, because I want to finish my career with the Cubs. If I can.”
That story is verified by way of Chicago.
”I talked to Ryne in San Diego,” Cubs president and chief operating officer Don Grenesko says. ”He wants to be a Cub forever. We want him to be a Cub forever. There aren`t many players we`d do this for, not many players we`d want to extend so early into an existing contract.
”But it`s a matter of trust. Players like Ryne would play hard, play every day, whether they were making a $1 million a game or 25 cents. When we signed him to the last contract, he became the highest-paid second baseman in the major leagues by $500,000. Which was fine. He`s earned it. Now his salary is below that of players in his class, and that`s why we`re talking.”
If it all sounds like a very smooth arrangement, it isn`t. Sandberg and his agent, Jim Turner, are making neither threats nor promises, but they have some problems. So does Grenesko.
”Right now, yes,” he says. ”We`re pretty far apart.”
The Cubs do not believe in renegotiating an existing contract, only lengthening what is there. Sandberg and Turner concur. On that much, the two sides agree. But the recent Cub offer-three more years at a total of $12 million-has been dismissed by Turner as insufficient. Granted, that would mean an annual average of $4 million for Sandberg from 1993 through 1995. But by then, Turner contends, such a sum would be obsolete for Sandberg. If, indeed, it isn`t now.
”Example,” Turner says. ”Before agreeing to a trade to the White Sox, Raines signed with them for three years at $10.5 million. With Montreal, he was just about where Ryne is now, $4.2 million for the next two years. In effect then, the White Sox extended Raines at $6.3 million for one year. A record.”
Numbers like that probably shock the Cubs, who have two years to worry about Sandberg, where the national economy is headed, where the national pastime`s economy is headed. What happens when the next network TV contract is signed? What if baseball`s Basic Agreement is reopened because of financial strife? Whoa, says Turner. Under any dire circumstances, a superstar such as Sandberg will reap a superstar salary.
”So there is nothing the Cubs can do in the next two years,” Turner says, ”that they can`t do now, in the next two weeks before spring training.”
There is one thing the Cubs can do, and that is wait. But that has its perils. Management and Sandberg-Turner agree that once baseball begins, negotiations end. That means, if there`s no solution by this spring, all is postponed to next autumn, correct?
”No,” says Turner, ”postponed, period. Postponed indefinitely.”
”By next off-season,” Sandberg says, ”I`ll have one more season before I can be a free agent. If I get that far, I might as well go the limit.”
”In other words,” says Turner, ”explore the process to its fullest. Ryne almost did it before his last contract, before the Cubs signed him at the last minute. That doesn`t mean he couldn`t stay with the Cubs, but it would allow him to determine his worth on the open market. Chances are some other team would come forward and overwhelm him.”
Ryne Sandberg, free agent? He`s two years away, but the Cubs might have only two weeks to avoid it.
