September 28, 1997: Cardinals win in Ryne Sandberg’s last career game as McGwire hits 58th home run

On August 2, 1997, Ryne Sandberg announced his second retirement from the Chicago Cubs, a season after the star second baseman had returned from his earlier retirement. “Everyone has their time,” Sandberg said. “My time has come.”1

He played his final game on September 28, the last day of the 1997 season, at St. Louis’s Busch Stadium. The 38-year-old Sandberg got two final at-bats before he was replaced by rookie Miguel Cairo. The Cardinals, led by Mark McGwire’s 58th home run of the season, the most by a major-leaguer since Roger Maris’s then-record 61 in 1961, defeated the Cubs, 2-1.  

Sandberg played third base as a rookie in 1982 before moving to second in 1983. He burst into stardom with two memorable home runs against Hall of Fame-bound Cardinals fireman Bruce Sutter in June 1984. Named National League MVP in ’84 as the Cubs reached the postseason for the first time in 39 years, Sandberg was a fixture for the next decade, making 10 All-Star teams and receiving nine Gold Glove and seven Silver Slugger Awards.

After he shocked the baseball community with his first retirement during the 1994 season,2 Sandberg returned on a one-year contract in 1996. After that season, he signed what turned out to be his final contract with the Cubs, a $3.25 million deal.

The 1997 Cubs’ season was best forgotten. Chicago set an NL record with 14 consecutive losses to start the season.3 One highlight came on April 26, when Sandberg hit his 267th career home run, off Pittsburgh’s Steve Cooke, to eclipse Joe Morgan for the most home runs by a major-league second baseman.4 Sandberg’s 24th career two-homer game on August 2, following his pregame retirement announcement, was another highlight. The Cubs entered the last game of the season with 68 wins and 93 losses, headed for their lowest winning percentage since 1981.

St. Louis, which had missed the World Series by one game in 1996, losing a three-games-to-one lead to the Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series, had aimed to win the NL Central Division crown for the second consecutive year. But injuries to Brian Jordan and Ron Gant hindered the team, and the Cardinals found themselves at 73 wins and 88 losses on the final day of the season.5

The major moment of the 1997 Cardinals season was the trade for McGwire, whose 52 homers for the Oakland A’s in 1996 gave him the second home-run title of his career.6 Before the July 31 trade deadline, Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty was interested in dealing for a veteran hitter: McGwire, Toronto’s Joe Carter, or Detroit’s Travis Fryman.

The A’s were interested in rookie righty Manny Aybar, but Jocketty refrained from trading the young pitcher. As an alternative, Jocketty placed hard-throwing pitching prospect Eric Ludwick in the trade discussion.7 At the deadline, both teams agreed on a deal that included three pitchers – Ludwick, T.J. Mathews, and Blake Stein – for McGwire.8

Aybar remained in St. Louis and started the season finale. The 25-year-old Dominican native had made his major-league debut on August 4 at Shea Stadium, just days after the McGwire deal, when he pitched 5⅓ innings and allowed four runs in a 4-2 loss to the New York Mets. He had started 11 games and had a 2-4 record, picking up his first big-league win, against the Chicago White Sox, on September 3.

Facing rookie Aybar was Steve Trachsel. Trachsel was in his fourth full season with the Cubs and had a record of 8-12. While Trachsel had set a career high in strikeouts with 160, he had given up 31 home runs to this point. In his previous appearance, on September 23 at Houston, Trachsel pitched 5⅓ innings and took the loss in a 5-3 Astros win.

Sandberg was honored in a pregame ceremony and received a standing ovation from the Cardinals and Cubs fans in attendance.9 Batting .265, 20 points below his career average, Sandberg stepped to the plate with one out in the top of the first inning. He laid off a slider low and away before cutting and missing on a fastball and a slider up. On a 1-and-2 pitch, Sandberg grounded to shortstop Luis Ordaz.

The game was still scoreless when Sandberg came up again with two outs in the third. Aybar, on 3-and-2, threw a slider outside, but Sandberg got good extension on the pitch and drove the ball deep to center field. Center fielder Ray Lankford raced to the warning track and corralled the ball a couple of feet from the outfield wall. It was almost a memorable final home run in Sandberg’s last at-bat.

Before the start of the Cardinals’ third, Cairo came onto the field to replace Sandberg at second base. As Sandberg trotted off to the dugout, the Busch Stadium crowd gave the future Hall of Famer a standing ovation. After high-fiving his teammates, Sandberg gave the standing fans one final curtain call. It was his 2,151st game as a Cub, the fourth most in franchise history.10

Aybar and Trachsel pitched scoreless innings until the top of the sixth, when Chicago’s Mark Grace walked with one out. Brant Brown lined a first-pitch fastball to right for a single, allowing Grace to reach third. Dave Hansen’s perfect suicide squeeze to third baseman Gary Gaetti scored Grace, and the Cubs led 1-0.

The Cardinals equalized the score in the next half-inning. On an 0-and-2 pitch, Trachsel threw a curveball outside that McGwire went down to get and drove to center field, over the 402-foot sign. It was McGwire’s 58th home run of the season, 24 of which had come after the trade to St. Louis, and his third in two games.11 The Cardinals fans stood and cheered for their new superstar, and McGwire rewarded them with a curtain call.12

The score remained 1-1 until the bottom of the eighth, when righty Marc Pisciotta came on in relief of Trachsel. The Cardinals’ Phil Plantier, playing the last game of an eight-season big-league career, drew a five-pitch leadoff walk, and the fans came to their feet for McGwire, while fan favorite Willie McGee ran for Plantier. With McGwire batting, McGee sprinted toward second. Despite Tyler Houston’s throw beating McGee to the base, second-base umpire Greg Bonin ruled him safe as McGee’s foot touched the base before Cairo applied the tag. Manager Jim Riggleman briefly argued with Bonin, but the call stood.

While the Cardinal fans hoped for a 59th home run, McGwire walked on Pisciotta’s sixth pitch of the at-bat. Lankford moved McGee to third on a deep fly caught by Brooks Kieschnick at the right-field wall.

Gaetti, with the chant of, “Gary! Gary! Gary!” in the background, drove a slider to right-center caught by Kieschnick, a sacrifice fly scoring McGee with the Cardinals’ final run of the season.

Despite Dennis Eckersley’s 36 saves in 1997, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa kept left-handed reliever Lance Painter on the mound. Riggleman countered by pitch-hitting right-hander Sammy Sosa in place of the lefty Hansen. The strategy failed as Painter got Sosa to offer on a 2-and-2 breaking ball down. Riggleman sent another right-hander, Mike Hubbard, to pinch-hit for lefty Houston. Again, Painter registered another swinging strikeout, this time on a 1-and-2 offspeed pitch.

With two down, Riggleman sent one last right-handed hitter, José Hernández, to bat in place of the lefty Kieschnick. Hernandez lined to right field. McGee, who had been inserted as a defensive replacement, made the catch to end the game.13

While much of the media attention focused on McGwire’s single-season home-run chase, La Russa acknowledged that the highlight of the game was Sandberg’s recognition. “I thought that was better than anything we did today, including [Mark McGwire’s] home run. Mark will be back next year. But that was it for Ryne.”14

Sandberg acknowledged that the feeling of finishing his career had not worn off yet. He said he did not think the feeling would wear off “until I know it’s time to get ready to go to spring training. Then, I don’t know how I’ll feel.”15 In 2005, in his third year on the ballot, Sandberg was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author relied on Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play. He also consulted player biographies in the SABR BioProject; the RetroSimba.com St. Louis Cardinals history blog post of the Mark McGwire trade; and a recording of the WGN television broadcast of the full game, posted on YouTube by the Chad Blanchard account.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN199709280.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1997/B09280SLN1997.htm

https://retrosimba.com/2017/07/29/how-cardinals-were-able-to-acquire-mark-mcgwire/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bAQXSUmL0w&t=215s  

Notes

1 Paul Sullivan, “Sandberg to Quit after ’97,” Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1997: 25.

2 Joseph A. Reeves, “Ryne Sandberg’s Retirement: ‘I lost the Edge It Takes,’” Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1994: 4, 1.

3 The 14-game losing streak was also a franchise record for most consecutive losses; Paul Sullivan, “Hitting Still Isn’t Average,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1997: 3, 3.

4 Mike Reilley, “Nothing ‘Little’ About This Win,” Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1997: 3, 3.

5 Ray Lankford’s 31 home runs were the most ever by a St. Louis Cardinals center fielder; Rick Hummel, “McGwire Gives Team Maneuvering Room,” The Sporting News, September 29, 1997: 39.

6 Rick Hummel, “Cards Deal for McGwire,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 1, 1997: 1.

7 Rick Hummel, “Cardinals’ Trade Quest Heads Toward Final Day,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 31, 1997: 5D.

8 Hummel, “Cards Deal for McGwire.”

9 Mike Eisenbath, “2 Innings and Out as Cubs’ Sandberg Gets a Big Send-Off,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 29, 1997: 3B.

10 As of 2024, Ernie Banks held the franchise record with 2,528 games played from 1953 through 1971.

11 This round-tripper was the 32nd and final home run Steve Trachsel allowed in 1997, a total that led the NL that season.

12 Coincidentally, Trachsel gave up McGwire’s 62nd home run that broke Maris’s single-season home run record in 1998.

13 Aybar, who received a no-decision in this game, had an eight-year major-league career with seven different teams. He went 17-18 in 208 appearances. Of the three pitchers traded to Oakand in the McGwire deal, T.J. Mathews had the longest career, going 32-26 in eight seasons and 362 games for the Cardinals, A’s, and Astros.

14 Eisenbath, “2 Innings and Out as Cubs’ Sandberg Gets a Big Send-Off.”

15 Don Wade, “Professionalism, Elegance Marked Ryno’s Career,” Evansville (Indiana) Courier and Press, September 29, 1997: C1.