Ryne Sandberg's Hall of Fame Speech First Draft

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Today is the day to get off the trolley

Funny Ha-Ha 4-Ever!

Ryne Sandberg's Hall of Fame Speech First Draft

I stand here before you today humbled, and a grateful baseball player.

The reason I am here, they tell me, is that I played the game a certain way. That I played the game the way it was supposed to be played. I don't know about that. But I do know this. I had too much respect for the game to play it any other way. You know, like in a corked-bat, chest-thumping way.

And if there is a single reason I am here today it is because of one word: respect. I love to play baseball. I'm a baseball player. I've always been a baseball player. I'm still a baseball player. That's who I am. I am not a player whose name sounds like Mammy Mosa.

Make a great play? Act like you've done it before. But in a way that means that you're not excited about it, Mammy.

Hit a home run? Put your head down, drop the uncorked bat and run around the bases. Don't hop, especially if you're so up on steroids that it shatters your bones.

My managers, like Don Zimmer and Jim Frey, they always said I made things easy on them by showing up on time, never getting into trouble, being ready to play every day, leading by example, being unselfish. Unselfish. Un-Sammyish?

When we went home every winter, they warned us not to lift heavy weights because they didn't want us to lose flexibility. They wanted us to be baseball players, not only home run hitters. They told us not to take steroids, too, and I didn't do that.

These guys sitting up here did not pave the way for the rest of us so the players could swing for the fences every time up and forget how to move a runner over to third. Or to leave the last game of the season early.

Teammates like Larry Bowa, who took me under his wing; Rick Sutcliffe, who was like an older brother; Bob Dernier, half of the daily double. There was Shawon Dunston and MARK GRACE. And together we were a double-play combination for 10 years. Shawon Dunston, who knew three weeks in advance that we were facing Nolan Ryan and always had a hamstring pull planned for the day before.

Not Sammy Sosa.

I hope others in the future will know this feeling for the same reasons--respect for the game of baseball. When we all played it, it was mandatory. Just like daily steroids tests ought to be.

Thank you, and go Cubs! Boo, Orioles.