Ryne Sandberg was a natural who made real-life mythology one June Saturday in Chicago

How many regular-season games in any sport do you really remember with the passing of time? Two percent? Less?

I remember few games as vividly as one I didn’t see except for video highlights some time later.

Yet, the memory came back in technicolor and surround sound with the news Ryne Sandberg had died of prostate cancer Monday at 65.

The date was June 23, 1984, the venue was Wrigley Field. The Chicago Cubs defeated the St. Louis Cardinals in 11 innings, 12-11. The Cardinals had leads of 7-1 and 9-3. It was 9-8 in the bottom of the ninth when Cardinals pitcher Bruce Sutter — perhaps the best closer in the sport at the time — surrendered a homer to third-year major leaguer Sandberg to tie the game.

St. Louis scored two runs in the top of the 10th. Willie McGee drove in the go-ahead run. McGee hit for the cycle in the game and had six RBIs, a sensational effort. Yet, this would forever be known as the Sandberg Game.

I interviewed McGee in the Cardinals’ Busch Stadium clubhouse before a game a few years later. He was gracious and generous to a stranger and answered questions with thoughtful detail. You remember these things, too.

Anyway, Sandberg came back up to bat in the last of the 10th with the Cubs down 11-9. He walloped a two-run homer in the left field bleachers for his fifth hit and sixth and seventh RBIs. The Cubs went on to win it in the 12th on an RBI single by Dave Owen.

It was NBC’s Saturday Game of the Week, so the nation saw it. That meant Cubs announcer Harry Caray did more play-by-play on the WGN Radio broadcast than usual because the Cubs didn’t have TV rights for that game. Caray’s eyes were my eyes, though my eyeglasses were far less thick than his.

That day, I covered the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Trials in Allendale, Mich., outside Grand Rapids. By day’s end, Iowa’s Barry Davis, Ed Banach and Lou Banach qualified for the U.S. team.

The wrestling had a morning and evening session. In between, I was driving to get lunch and turned on the Cubs’ radio broadcast. I ended up motoring around town until the game was over because of the excitement pouring out of the car radio.

The Cubs improved to 37-31 and seemed to have the makings of a potential division-contender. They didn’t have a winning record in any of the previous 11 seasons, but went on to win the National League East and participate in the postseason for the first time since 1945.

One of many reasons was Sandberg, the NL’s Most Valuable Player that year with nutty numbers for someone batting in the No. 2 spot of a lineup. He hit .314, had 200 hits, 36 doubles, 19 triples, 19 homers, 84 RBIs and 32 stolen bases.

He got nine Gold Gloves awards as a second baseman. His statue outside Wrigley Field shows him playing on defense. He wanted it that way.

The 19 triples is the wildest stat given Wrigley is hardly an ideal ballpark for three-baggers, and only two NL players have topped 19 in a season since ’84. Only four MLB teams had 20 or more this season going into Tuesday’s games.

Sandberg always said little, just showed up every day and played hard. He was never again the MVP, but stole 54 bases the following season and hit 40 homers in 1990. For a while, he held the record for career homers by a second baseman. In 2005, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The soft-spoken Sandberg was just 24 in the summer of ’84. The Sandberg Game came six weeks after the release of the movie “The Natural,” with Robert Redford playing a mythical soft-spoken slugger named Roy Hobbs. That June day in Chicago was real-life mythology.

NBC, with Bob Costas and Tony Kubek on the mics, got a winner that day. After Sandberg tied the game with his bomb in the 11th, Costas shouted "That's the real Roy Hobbs because this can't be happening! We're sitting here, and it doesn't make any difference if it's 1984 or ’54 — just freeze this and don't change a thing!"

No, we don’t remember the vast majority of games we see. But the ones we do recall are why we keep coming back for more.

“I never saw a game like this in my life, and I’ve been around a long life,” said Caray near the end of his radio broadcast. “Holy cow!”

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com