CLEVELAND — Two days after scoring the gold medal-winning goal for the U.S. women’s national soccer team, Mallory Swanson sat in a golf cart outside the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field, a slightly less glamorous locale than the Paris Olympics.

Mallory was there to meet up with her husband, Chicago Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson, after Monday night’s game. It’s both a drab waiting area and the same spot where so many euphoric friends and family gathered after the final out of the 2016 World Series.

If it’s not quite going to Disney World, it’s still the unique path that they’ve chosen. The next day, the Swansons were spotted riding scooters around the downtown streets, a scene reminiscent of the classic Joakim Noah quote from the era when the Chicago Bulls tangled with LeBron James: “I never heard anybody say, ‘I’m going to Cleveland on vacation.’”

This seemed like a good time for The Athletic to catch up with Dansby on current events.

Going for gold 

The Cubs were watching on the TVs in the Wrigley Field clubhouse last year when Mallory suffered a major knee injury that would keep her sidelined during the Women’s World Cup. That disappointment helped fuel this comeback.

Dansby: The whole story is just truly God written. For the team, it’s that…

The San Diego School of Baseball was backed by hitting stars such as Tony Gwynn and Alan Trammell, but it was the pitching minds that gave the early 1980s baseball camp its charm — and its legacy.

Brent Strom and Tom House had been teammates at the University of Southern California and then, later, journeyman pitchers in the major leagues. Aside from lineage, they also shared deep-seated hunches that there was more to learn about baseball than previous generations had taught.

So when the day’s instruction was over, they sat in the dugouts of Grossmont College or ventured to a local watering hole, tossing ideas back and forth: the things they loved about the game, the things they thought were wrong, the things they wanted to change.

Once, during a baby shower for another coach’s wife, the men were scolded when they were found in the corner of a room, playing back film of pitchers. They were all obsessives, and the San Diego School of Baseball was their offseason oasis — a place where they could gather and discuss, without judgment and scorn, some of the very concepts that decades later would alter the balance of baseball.

“A summit,” House called it, “of smart baseball minds.”

Before PITCHf/x and Statcast could measure progress, before internet message boards and…

Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball. 

It was glimmering out there for Ryne Sandberg, the same destination for a very different test of endurance and will. He had made it to Cooperstown as a player. Now, he wanted to make it as a cancer patient on the way to recovery.

And he did. Sandberg was one of the 14 Hall of Famers who gathered last Saturday at Doubleday Field for the East-West Classic, a recreation of the old Negro Leagues All-Star Game. He didn’t play, but he won.

“The timing was good for this trip, so I had this on the calendar, kind of penciled in,” Sandberg said behind the batting cage before the game. “Then I got good news last week, so it freed me up to come up here. And this is a well-needed getaway. This is a special place to come anyway, and my wife also needed a break; she’s had her hands full as well. We always love coming here.”

Sandberg, 64, announced on Jan. 22 that he had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. In the four months since, he has chronicled his ordeal on Instagram, posting messages through six rounds of chemotherapy.

In a post last week, Sandberg revealed that PET and MRI scans on May 20 revealed “NO detection of Cancer!” He said he would…

It’s a quarter to eight on a Sunday and a sportswriter gets up from bed to go into his home office. He tells his wife, a Chicago Cubs fan, that Cody Bellinger signed while they were sleeping.

“For a lot of money?” she asks.

“Well …”

As it turns out, it was a pillow announcement over a pillow contract for Bellinger, his agent Scott Boras and Cubs president Jed Hoyer.

The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal confirmed Jeff Passan’s overnight report that Bellinger signed a deal that could potentially go for three years for a possible $80 million.

Really, it’s a one-year deal with options, just like last year but for more money. Bellinger gets $30 million this year and if he wants it, $30 million again in 2025. He can keep it rolling with $20 million in 2026. But I think we’ll see Bellinger, good health willing, test free agency again next offseason. Then Boras can get back to work and Cubs fans can get back to complaining online about Cubs owner Tom Ricketts being cheap.

A lot of money? For one year, sure. But it’s not the blockbuster, nine-figure deal that Bellinger likely expected after opting out of his deal with the Cubs last fall. Still, it’s a raise from the $17.5 million he made from the Cubs in 2023. (He also got a $1 million bonus for winning Comeback Player of…

The Hall of Fame is made for players like Adrián Beltré. As a pure hitter, reliable slugger and slick third baseman, Beltré had few peers: No other infielder in the history of baseball has 3,000 hits, 400 homers and five Gold Glove awards. Beltré, now 44, was a lock for the Hall of Fame.

As a first-time Cooperstown candidate, Beltré did not need to follow the breathless tracking of public ballots this winter. Yet he still could not feel secure, he said, until his wife and son assured him on Tuesday that election day looked promising. He could savor it.

“That made me relax a little bit more, and I kind of forced myself to try to enjoy this moment,” Beltré said from his home in Southern California, moments after achieving his sport’s greatest honor. “It was going to be a nice moment, and probably the last moment in baseball that I was going to accomplish, being at the pinnacle of the game.”

Beltré had company at the summit on Tuesday, with Todd Helton and Joe Mauer joining him in the new class of Hall of Famers. Former manager Jim Leyland, elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee last month, will also be inducted at the ceremony July 21.

Candidates must receive 75 percent of the ballots from 10-year members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of…

Ryne Sandberg, a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and an iconic player for generations of Chicago Cubs fans, revealed Monday that he was recently diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. Sandberg, 64, shared the news on his Instagram account, announcing that he has already begun treatment.

“I am surrounded by my loving wife Margaret, our incredibly supportive family, the best medical care team, and our dear friends,” Sandberg wrote. “We will continue to be positive, strong, and fight to beat this. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time for me and my family.”

Sandberg, who maintains a residence in suburban Chicago, remains connected to the Cubs as an ambassador for the team and a regular presence around Wrigley Field.

Sandberg’s arrival, via a lopsided trade with the Philadelphia Phillies, helped transform the Cubs into a playoff team in 1984 and 1989. Sandberg became a face of the franchise as the Cubs broadcast their games on the WGN superstation and installed lights for night games at the Friendly Confines.

Sandberg played 15 of his 16 major-league seasons with the Cubs, piling up 10 All-Star selections, nine Gold Gloves and seven Silver Sluggers. He was the National League MVP in 1984 and one of the greatest second…

NASHVILLE — Jim Leyland buttoned up his forever jersey on Monday, the one with “Hall of Fame” in script across the front. He sat on a ballroom dais at the Winter Meetings, flanked by Hall officials as his wife, Katie, beamed with pride from a few feet away. So did former rivals and colleagues like Tony La Russa and Joe Torre.

Leyland, 78, was one of them now: a certified Hall of Famer, elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee on Sunday night. A phone call from the Hall’s chairman, Jane Forbes Clark, welcomed him to Cooperstown.

“My wife said, who is that? I said, ‘It’s Jake from State Farm,’” Leyland said, his deadpan wit still sharp. “Anyway, I had 294 texts last night, from friends and people all over the world, really. … I can’t tell you how fortunate a ride it’s been.”

As joyous as the occasion was for Leyland, it was striking to see the other, empty side of the dais. That’s where Lou Piniella should have been.

At MLB’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, attention has shifted to the Hall of Fame’s newest electee. Jim Leyland addressed the media Monday, reflecting on his life in baseball and looking ahead to July’s Induction Ceremony.

Read more: https://t.co/5wwxyeF79m pic.twitter.com/NDl9cl70oI

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and…

CHICAGO — “I’ve been up since 4 a.m.,” Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson said late Tuesday night inside the Wrigley Field clubhouse, explaining why he removed himself from a 4-for-4 game and how he felt physically tired and emotionally drained after everything that happened to his wife Mallory Swanson, a key player on the U.S. women’s national soccer team.

Dansby Swanson woke up early in Chicago that morning to take Mallory Swanson to a local hospital for surgery to repair the torn patella tendon in her left knee, a devastating injury she suffered during Saturday’s exhibition against Ireland, which was supposed to prepare her for the Women’s World Cup this summer.

The Cubs signed Dansby Swanson to a seven-year, $177 million contract last winter, in part, because of his winning pedigree and long track record of durability. Swanson chose Chicago, in part, because his wife was already an established professional athlete in the city with the NWSL’s Red Stars.

Swanson helped the Cubs erase an early seven-run deficit against the Mariners and then signaled to the dugout before the start of the sixth inning. The team initially described Swanson’s issue as “lower left side tightness.” Cubs manager David Ross then clarified it as “cramping” while briefing the media…

MESA, Ariz. — Dansby Swanson left the Atlanta area where he grew up, the Braves team he helped lead to a World Series title and a corporation that has guaranteed $600 million in contract extensions to five employees within the last year. There were mixed feelings amid that split, plus the emotional weight of his wedding, honeymoon and the death of his grandfather this offseason. The Chicago Cubs made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: seven years, $177 million; a full no-trade clause; the city where his wife, Mallory, plays professional soccer; and the chance to be a face of the franchise at Wrigley Field.

Swanson didn’t hesitate when asked: Have there been any moments during spring training when you realized you made the right decision?

“I’ve believed that ever since Day 1,” Swanson said. “My wife and I prayed about it a lot. When that was answered, I haven’t regretted one ounce of it. I feel very convicted in being here. Chicago is where we felt led to be. I’ve learned to trust the big man’s plan more than my own. Every time I’ve had a big change in my life, it’s worked out for the better. Getting traded to Atlanta was an amazing thing for me. That’s how I met my wife. I just know that this is where we’re supposed to be.”

We’re talking about…