Note—It took two days to finish this. I hope you will find it worth it.
Reports
are that the largest fan contingent in memory swamped hard-to-get-to Cooperstown, New York yesterday for the
induction of Ron Santo into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Little wonder, really. The old third
baseman may rival his former team mate Ernie
Banks as the most beloved player ever to don Chicago Cub blue pinstripes.
It
was a joyous event. Ron’s wife and
family are officially thrilled and upbeat.
But it is hard not to wonder, just what the hell took so long and why
was Santo only elected to the Holy of
Holies—the greatest admission of his life—until nearly a year after his
death.
Santo
first became eligible for election to the hall 31 years ago in 1980. That was five years after his retirements at
the age of 31. It was a crowed class
that year and Santo only got 4 % of the votes which under the rules of the time
removed him from further consideration.
His apparent crime was that he played the oft-snubbed position at third
base—only 3 of more 120 inductees at the time had patrolled the hot
corner. Hall voters were always more
enamored of pitchers and power hitting outfielders. He also played on a club that despite being
one of the most talented in baseball in 1969 had failed to make it into the World Series. Three members of that team were already in
the Hall—Banks, Billy Williams, Ferguson
Jenkins and evidently some baseball writers, the electors to the Hall, felt
that any more would be unseemly for a team that failed to go all the way.
In
1985 considerable grumbling about great players dropped from consideration
resulted in a change of the rules. Santo
was one of several players put back on the ballot with 15 more years of eligibility. Each year his percentage of the vote grew as
his accomplishments were put in contexts.
While he never posted the Hall of Fame unofficial standard—500 home runs
and/or 3,000 career hits, it began to dawn on voters that he spent the bulk of
his career in the most pitcher dominant years in baseball history, the 1960’s
and early ‘70’s. When his bases on balls
were added in his on base percentage was among the best in the game and his base
path aggression helped manufacture runs.
He was also probably the best defensive third baseman of his era and a
club house leader. In his final year of eligibility
he got 43% of the vote and finished third.
Two
years later another rules change added the Veteran’s
Committee, made up of former ballplayers and Hall members, who
re-considered players who were retired for more than 20 years. Santo tied for first in voting in 2005 and
placed first the next three years.
Despite this, he failed to get a set minimum number of votes in those
years and no player was elevated by the Veteran’s Committee.
In
2008 Santo and the whole world was so sure that he would make it that live
television cameras were on hand to record his joy at receiving the news. Instead he was stunned and disappointed to
learn that he had been passed over yet again.
The heartbreak was palpable.
The
next year the Cubs retired his
uniform number 10 and hoisted a flag over Wrigley
Field, flying just under Bank’s number 14.
He told the crowd that “This is my Hall of Fame.”
Yet
another rule change gave him one more chance.
A new Golden Era Committee composed
of 16 of the biggest surviving names among Hall of Famers was created to give
another look at players like Santo who had been by-passed. That committee met in December 2011, a year
after Santo died of bladder cancer at
his Arizona home. After an impassioned plea by Committee member
Billy Williams, Santo was finally elected posthumously by a vote of 15 to 16,
I’d
like to know just who that one hold out was.
All
of this would be of little consequence except for died in the wool baseball
fanatics if it wasn’t for Ron Santo’s extraordinary life.
Santo
was born on February 25, 1940. His
family lived in a hard-scrabble Italian neighborhood
in Seattle, Washington nicknamed Garlic Gulch. Encouraged by his baseball loving father
Ron played sandlot ball and then in Little
League and other organized leagues as he grew older. He lived practically within eyeshot of Sick’s Stadium Seattle’s minor league
ballpark where he watched the Seattle
Rainiers play.
At Franklin High School he became a star,
propelling his team into the national spotlight. He was being scouted by pro teams as early as
his freshman year. When he played in a
high school all star game in New York, he
attracted even more attention.
In
fact as Santo prepared to graduate every professional team offered him a
contract and a signing bonus. Some teams
offered as much as $80,000 to ink a deal.
But Santo chose the team that offered him the least money—$20,000 from
the Cubs. He picked the Cubs because
their Northwest scout, Dave Kosher,
had followed him all the way through high school and encouraged him. Also the Cubs were in dire need of a reliable
third baseman and Santo’s father thought that they would provide the quickest
path to the Big Leagues.
Santo
made the right choice. He made his debut
after two seasons in the minors in 1960 at the age of just 19. He would go on to spend all but the last
season of his 14 year Major League career with the Cubs. A remarkable achievement to those used to
modern baseball players nomadic existence.
But
when Santo came up, he was harboring a dark secret—he was an insulin dependent diabetic. He rightfully
feared that no club would have signed him if they knew. These days such a deception would be impossible—players
are subjected to every kind of medical examination and their records are
practically subpoenaed. But in those
days team docs mostly checked for tell-tale signs of broken bones, a steady heart
beat, and clear lungs. Santo’s kept his
secret most of the way through his career, eventually letting his roommate in
on the secret.
Traveling
and long games or double headers often made it difficult. Santo did not want to use a needle in the
club house and needed to eat often and regularly to balance his blood
sugar. Occasionally he would suffer the consequences
of not being able to maintain himself. Once
in the late innings with the game on the line he came to the plate with men on
base and an opportunity to put the Cubs ahead.
“I saw three of everything, I
picked out the middle ball and slammed it out of the park.” The Cubs won that day.
Plucky
was the best adjective for Santo’s boyish enthusiasm for the game in face of
adversity. He never lost either the
pluck or the enthusiasm. In the famous Pennant race of 1969, Santo ran down the
third base line and clicked his heels after a come-from-behind home win against
the Montreal Expos in June. Manager
Leo Durocher asked him to
continue doing it after every home win to motivate his teammates. It did so, but it infuriated opponents. After the Cub’s famous late fade due
exhaustion among the regular position players, who Durocher would not rest,
Santo never again clicked his heels after a game.
Some people believe that lingering bitterness by
rival players about “showing them up” contributed to Santo’s failure to get enough
votes from the Veterans Committee for earlier admittance to the Hall.
In his pro career Santo hit for a .277 batting
average, but with over 1000 base on balls had an on base percentage
of .365. He collected 2,254 hits including 342 home runs and 1,331 runs
batted in. Despite doubts that his
production was good enough for the Hall, Santo ranks in the top half of the 10
third basement now in the hall and was elected to the All Star Team every year from 1963 to 1973.
His
defense contributed mightily to the Cubs and was a five time Gold Glove Winner. After he was traded to the Chicago White Sox for his last season,
the Cubs did not have a quality, reliable third baseman until Aramis Ramirez
decades later.
After the 1973 season with his numbers slipping and
his salary high, the Cubs tried to trade Santo to the Angels, but he
became the first veteran player to veto a trade under contract changes made
after the 1972 strike. He wanted to stay in Chicago, so the team dealt
him in a multi player deal that also brought ace pitcher Steve Stone to
Wrigley Field, to the White Sox. The
South Side team mostly used him as a designated hitter, then played him
out of position at second base. It
was an unhappy year for Santo, and both Sox and Cub fans. At the end of the season he retired.
Thirty four years old is mighty young to retire from
what has been your whole life and while you are still brimming with
energy. Santo was at loose ends. He pursued business interests, mostly
investing in restaurants. He stayed in
close contact with former teammates and haunted the golf links with them.
Santo turned his attention to seeking a cure for
diabetes, which he had finally publicly acknowledged the he suffered from on Ron
Santo Day at Wrigley Field in 1971.
In 1971 he launched the annual Juvenile
Diabetes Research Foundation’s (JDRF)
Ron Santo Walk to Cure Diabetes in
Chicago. Over the years this and other
efforts raised $60 million dollars for research. He was also widely credited for becoming the
human face of Type 2 diabetes and
was named the JDRF Person
of the Year in 2002.
Despite
these accomplishments, Santo yearned to be back in baseball, particularly with
his beloved Cubs. He got the chance in
1990 when WGN Radio hired him as a
color commentator. He was not a likely
choice—his voice was raspy and his grammar sometimes left something to be
desired. He was uncomfortable reading
the required commercials at first and out of sync with his broadcast partners. But he got better.
Fans
appreciated his heart-on-the-sleave, live-and-die with the Cubs attitude in the
booth, although it drew sometimes harsh criticism from advocates of a more
dispassionate approach. He would scream
with delight at some feat on the field, groan with palpable pain at bonehead
moves, and loudly disdain bad calls from umpires.
He
really hit his stride in 1996 when he was teamed up with veteran play-by-play
man Pat Hughes. The two had instant rapport and were soon
exchanging hilarious banter on all manner of topics, some of it having to do
with events on the field. It came to be
known as the Pat and Ron Show. Out
takes were regularly played on other WGN shows and on TV sportscasts. People who didn’t care much about baseball
tuned in for the entertainment. And it
became widely popular for those watching the games on TV to “turn down the sound,
and turn on WGN radio,” which irked TV broadcasting legend Harry Caray and his successors.
Some people began to say that Santo would make it into the Hall of Fame
as a broadcaster before he did as a player.
Even
with the success and the obvious joy it brought him, Santo had to battle
recurring health crises that sometimes kept him away from the microphone. He suffered two heart attacks and had an earlier
scrape with cancer. But it was the
ravages of diabetes that caused him the most suffering. In 2001 his right leg was amputated below the
knee, the left a little more than a year later.
He was fitted with prosthetic limbs and was back to climbing the precarious
stairs to the broadcast booth as soon as he was able.
In
2004 his son Jeff documented his
struggles in an award winning documentary This Old Cub with unflinching
footage of him strapping on his legs and struggling to walk. It also documented his hopeful wait to be
notified of his Hall of Fame election and his disappointment at being passed
over once again.
In
2010 Santo was stricken with bladder cancer, although he kept his condition a
fairly closely guarded secret. He hoped
to recover and make Spring training with
the Cubs in 2011. Most of all, he wanted
to live to hear that the new Golden Age Committee would finally put him in the
Hall. It was not to be. He died in his sleep in his Scottsdale on December 2.
Santo’s
standing-room-only funeral was held at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral and was broadcast live by WGN radio and
television. He was eulogized by his old
team mates and his broadcast partner Pat Hughes. A funeral cartage left the Cathedral, passed
the Tribune Tower, home of WGN, and
made its way to Wrigley Field, where it circled the bases starting at
Third. Later his remains were cremated
and his ashes scattered at the ball park.
Last
year the Cubs unveiled a new statue of Santo as a young player balancing on one
foot and stretching to make a throw to peg a runner out.
It
you didn’t know Ron Santo before, now you know why there were so few dry eyes yesterday in Cooperstown.
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