MILWAUKEE — It was after Ryne Sandberg’s statue ceremony last year that the Chicago Cubs great spoke about his bout with cancer.

“I’ve learned about the people in my life, from my family to my friends to my neighbors to my teammates to the Cubs fans,” he said. “It’s all about the relationships I have with people, and there are a lot of them. Just a reflection on that. And to see everybody here today, that’s kind of what I’m talking about, how special it is.”

Sandberg’s death on Monday at the age of 65 brought tears to the people who knew him well, and to those whose lives he touched just by being himself, someone who generally enjoyed being around people and being around the game. When he came to spring training in February, following a relapse with the disease, he hid the pain and went about his business of trying to help the Cubs players any way he could.

“He was the blueprint for what it means to be an amazing Cub, the way he carried himself throughout his career, and everything he achieved,” Nico Hoerner said after Monday’s game. “Just how selfless he was in his time with us. It was never about him. Ever. He just truly loved the game of baseball, and that was particularly clear this spring.”

It wasn’t just about helping the Cubs. He was also good to his fans, knowing it meant something to them to have a brief acknowledgement.

An athlete can do that if they have it in them to want to deal with their fans, though it’s harder nowadays when everyone wants a piece of you, and you never know if that autograph seeker is doing it because they loved watching you perform or they’re thinking about the resale value down the road.

But that relationship between an athlete and a fan can be a life-changing experience. Sometimes, just a word of advice or a small gesture of kindness goes a long way. At the Hall of Fame Induction ceremony on Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., Willa White, the widow of Dick Allen, told the story of a young boy who waited after a game for Dick’s autograph.

Allen asked him if he’d accept a handshake instead, and the two talked for hours. Allen eventually took him under his wing and looked out for him over the years. Decades later, the young boy was now an old man, and he stood proudly at the Hall of Fame ceremonies as Willa introduced him to the crowd, honoring a man he just wanted to meet.

Allen, like Sandberg, died too soon. But they both were able to see how loved they were by their fans, with Allen getting his number retired in Philadelphia a few months before he passed away, and Sandberg getting his statue ceremony at Wrigley Field in 2024.

Cubs players all filed out of the clubhouse to stand on a patio overlooking Gallagher Way that day, paying respect to the legend who once made Wrigley Field home.

“That was a pleasant surprise with the current team,” Sandberg said. “When I came back as an ambassador in July of 2015, with the core group, the respect of the game with that group has now extended over to this group, (showing) respect for all the players that came before them. To see them come out, that was very touching.”

Some of those players got to know Sandberg well enough to keep a line of communication going. Ian Happ spoke after Monday’s game about how Sandberg talked to him about a tough start, relating his own problems in April, which included an 0 for 31 start to his career.

“In times that I struggled, I’d send him a note,” he said. “I remember one April, I was really grinding, and he told me his career numbers in April, and how he always came out of it. Just little things like that. And coming up as a second baseman, I was 21 years old in spring training and being able to give some advice and talk to me and not being above that, he just loved being around. He loved being there, and we knew how much he loved being a Cub. And we’re really lucky in this organization to have legends that want to come back and want to be around.”

Matthew Boyd said he met Sandberg for the first time this spring.

“And he treated me like I’d worn a Cubs uniform my whole life,” Boyd said. “It spoke to who he was for this organization as an ambassador to the game of baseball.”

When Sandberg played with the Cubs, the old clubhouse was small and cramped, and players sat and talked about baseball and life.

“We didn’t have all the distractions,” Sandberg said. “We didn’t have the iPhones and the iPads and a whole bunch of TVs and the games and things. We had a small locker room. Sometimes there’d be card games just to pass time, but we had time on our hands. Hours before the game, to have fun and keep the guys loose, and we’d already done our work on the field, it was all about having fun. You spend six months together, and two months of spring training. It’s a long time. Having fun while playing was something I liked to do.”

The players had nowhere to go to escape the media, and with mostly day games there was a lot of media in the clubhouse looking for stories. But Sandberg played alongside some all-time talkers like Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa, and was considered a quiet Cub who didn’t give great sound bites for TV or controversial quotes for the media. But if he trusted you and knew you were looking for information that wasn’t going to create a headline for the sake of creating a headline, he would sit and answer every question you had.

“He was as honest an athlete as you will ever come across, both on the field and off, meaning he could only play the game with complete respect for the game, for his teammates and his opponents,” said former Daily Herald writer Barry Rozner, who became close friends with Sandberg off the field.

“Honest, as in, he never cheated the game or the fans. And when the game was over, he did the best he could to accommodate the media, even though he was never totally comfortable facing pads and pens and cameras. He tried. Some thought he was boring. I would say those people never tried to get to know him.”

Some athletes go their entire careers without anyone really getting to know them, and sometimes that’s by design. Sandberg was an athlete who preferred to let his performance speak for him while others searched for the nearest dugout TV camera. He was not the kind of guy who asked for attention, but earned it by the way he played the game.

It’s going to take a while for Cubs Nation to process the life of this man and to understand why he meant so much to so many, just by being himself.

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