Family memories make Bruce Sutter’s passing hit a little harder

There are few days I remember as vividly with my Grandpa Bob as I do June 23, 1984. It was the day Bruce Sutter and Ryne Sandberg became intertwined forever in MLB history and my grandpa and I formed an unbreakable bond over baseball.

The death of Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter hit me a little harder as I remembered my grandpa

Growing up in the Tulsa area, cheering for the St. Louis Cardinals was easy. After all, the Tulsa Oilers were the Triple-A farm team from the Cardinals from 1959-1976 and Keith Hernandez, Bob Forsch, and plenty of other future Cardinals came through Tulsa. That and Tulsa’s proximity to St. Louis (six-hour drive) made northeastern Oklahoma Cardinals heaven for plenty of people, including my dad and grandpa.

Of course, as a teenager, rebellion is often built into the mindset, and it was with me as a high schooler. With WGN part of our local cable package, I often came home from school and turned on a Chicago Cubs game. It wasn’t long until, when given the choice of the Atlanta Braves on WTBS or the Cubs on WGN, I found myself drawn to what was happening inside the Friendly Confines.

A tradition in my house was to spend Saturday with one set of grandparents and Sunday with another. Since we all lived around 20 minutes from each other, that was easy to do. On that Saturday, June 23, 1984, I sat in my grandparents’ living room, TV trays in front of us all, eating a lunch my grandma had fixed with the Cubs and Cardinals on in the background.

As the game went on, my grandpa and I exchanged a few good-hearted barbs about the Cubs and Cardinals and who would eventually win the game. As Sutter entered the game in the ninth and with the visiting Cardinals holding a 9-8 lead in the ninth, my grandpa looked at me and smiled and said, “This game will be over quick.”

But then … it wasn’t as Sandberg introduced himself to the baseball world with Bob Costas calling the action.

Twice my grandpa teased the game was over. Twice I shot right back about Sandberg saying it wasn’t.

My grandpa and I talked a lot about that game in the years that followed. He stuck with the Cardinals. I stuck with the Cubs. We had our own family rivalry, but we both loved baseball.

When he passed in 1988, I inherited a series of notebooks (that I still have) where he was keeping track of the scores of both teams and the division standings so he’d be ready to talk baseball with me when I visited or called on the phone.

To this day, I still remember Grandpa Bob cursing the names of Sutter, Lee Smith, or any reliever who dared blow a lead in the ninth inning. That June day, however, it was more about us bonding than even the final score.

When I heard earlier today that Sutter had passed away, Grandpa Bob was the first person I thought about as I remembered sitting in his living room and watching Wrigley Field erupt with joy at the expense of Sutter and the Cardinals. To this day, I’m not sure there’s ever been a day that made me more of a baseball fan than that day. For that, I’ll always be grateful.

Bruce Sutter was a Hall of Fame reliever who racked up 300 saves. But I’ll always be thankful that he blew two in the same game that day in Chicago because it helped a teenager and his grandpa forge an even deeper bond over the game I still love today.