The pity and the sorrow: Ron Santo deserved better from those who were less than his peers
Here it is Sunday, and I learned only a few minutes ago that my favorite baseball player growing up, Ron Santo, died Thursday in Arizona.
While I was never much of an excuse for a baseball player myself, I always wanted to be a third baseman. Santo- by any measurement one of the ten top players at the Hot Corner in baseball history, and by baseball statistician Bill James's reckoning the sixth best- was the reason. Of all the third basemen I've watched in my life, only Brooks Robinson could match his defensive skills. And offensively he had better numbers than most of the third basemen in the Hall of Fame.
But Santo himself died unimmortalized at Cooperstown. Perhaps it was the fact that the team he's most identified with- the 1969 Cubs, "the best team never to win a pennant-" already has three of its starting nine in the Hall- and after all, they never did win that pennant. Perhaps it was his quiet, unassuming style, and his contentment with letting Ernie Banks and Billie Williams and Fergie Jenkins grab the headlines. Perhaps its' pettiness on the part of current Hall of Famers who are afraid to acknowledge that they were not quite as unique as they would like to think. Perhaps it's all of these. But whatever the reason, there is no justification whatsoever for the fact that Ron died without realizing his dream of election to Cooperstown. His lifetime stats tell a tale that can lead to no other conclusion.
It is a pity- and not much less than a scandal- that Santo was jilted by his fellow players and by the sportswriters all those years.
Bill James put it this way in his Historical Baseball Abstract, responding to a correspondent who misunderstood his passionate argument for Santo's admission to the Hall as simply an argument that there should be more third basemen there (there are fewer third basemen in Cooperstown, for some reason, than players at any other position):
Dear Mr. James:
I saw you on ESPN Sunday Night, when you said that Ron Santo should be elected to the Hall of Fame I just had to write and tell you how wrong you are.
You said that there are fewer third basemen in the Hall of Fame than players at any other position. Well, so what? The Hall of Fame should be only for the very greatest players. If you put in Santo because you need more third basemen, are you going to put in Sal Bando after that and Buddy Bell after that and Gary Gaetti after that? Eventually we'll wind up with Bob Bailey and Pete Ward in the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is supposed to be for players like Wille Mays and Tom Seaver, not for players like Ron Santo and Pete Ward.
— Cooperstown Defender
Dear Coop:
Thanks for writing. With regard to there being fewer third basemen in the Hall of Fame than players at any other position, you missed the purpose of the information. My point was not that there are too few third baseman [sic] in the Hall of Fame, and therefore we should elect a bunch of third basemen. My point was that Ron Santo was a better player than most of the third basemen in the Hall of Fame, and this is true despite the fact that fewer third basemen have been elected to the Hall of Fame than players at any other position.
As to Santo being a better player than most of the Hall of Fame third basemen, I think that if you study this issue carefully, you will be forced to agree that this is true, or was true before Schmidt and Brett. George Kell in his career drove in 100 runs once, scored 100 runs once; otherwise his career high in RBI was 93. Ron Santo scored 100 runs once, and drove in 93 runs every year, eight straight years. Obviously, Santo was doing a lot more to change the scoreboard than Kell was, even though Santo played in the 1960s, when runs were hard to come by.
Santo was not only a better hitter than Kell, he was also a better hitter than Jimmy Collins, Pie Traynor, Fred Lindstrom, and Brooks Robinson. He was a good hitter in a relatively long career, as he ranks eighth all-time in games played at third base. Defense? He won five Gold Gloves. I will agree that Santo was not a brilliant defensive third baseman. Had Brooks Robinson or Clete Boyer been in the National League, Santo's Gold Gloves would have been few and far between. Santo was a sure-handed third baseman with an excellent arm; he was not quick on his feet. I might even agree that Kell was probably a better fielder than Santo was — but Santo was a fine defensive third baseman. Kell, if he was better, could not have been enough better to offset the facts that Santo created more runs per year, that he did it for more years, and that he did it in a time when each run was more valuable.
By my reckoning, George Kell was the 30th best third baseman of all time; he is in the Hall of Fame. Fred Lindstrom was the 43rd best third baseman of all time; he is in the Hall of Fame. At several other positions, players have been selected who were not among the top 50. After the Hall of Fame has already honored the 30th-best and 43rd-best players at the position, does it degrade the Hall of Fame to then include the sixth-best? Does it not, in fact, enhance the integrity of the honor, to show that the institution is capable of some minimal consistency in its selections?
We could all agree, could we not, that the Hall of Fame is simply not going to stop selecting people? It's not going to happen; neither the Veteran's Committee nor the Hall of Fame as a whole is going to stop making selections. What I am saying is, it's not Ron Santo against Willie Mays. It is Ron Santo against Pete Browning, or Babe Herman, or Bob Meusel, or Jake Daubert, or somebody else whose only real advantage on Ron Santo is that he played so long ago that his flaws have been forgotten.
The reality is, Wille Mays never was and never can be the standard of the Hall of Fame. In the 1940s, many players were selected to the Hall of Fame who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo, let alone nowhere near as good as Willie Mays. Players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1950s, players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1960s, players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1970s (lots of them), players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1980s, and players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1990s. It is preposterous to argue that the Hall of Fame standard is Ted Williams, after six decades of honoring players like Tommy McCarthy (1946), Rabbit Maranville (1954), Elmer Flick (1963), Dave Bancroft (1971), George Kell (1983), and Tony Lazzeri (1991). The Ted Williams/Bob Gibson/Honus Wagner standard for Hall of Fame selection has never existed anywhere except in the imaginations of people who don't know anything about the subject.
Look, certain things just do not happen. Rivers do not run uphill, iron does not become gold, time does not go backward, whores do not become virgins, pigs do not give birth to lions, supermodels do not marry auto mechanics, and politicians do not forget about the next election. There is no alchemy by which the Hall of Fame may become what it never has been. Ron Santo towers far above the real standard of the Hall of Fame.
I take strong exception to James's characterization of Santo as merely a "sure handed," rather than a spectacular, fielder. I watched him do the impossible with his glove (and often with his bare hand) too often and for too long to concede that Ron was anything less than defensively spectacular- and to a degree with few peers in the game's history. As James notes, his offensive superiority to most of the third basemen- and players at the other positions- currently in the Hall speaks for itself.
None of this even acknowledges the fact that Santo played his entire career with diabetes, adisease which ultimately cost him both his legs and, indirectly, his life. It was a secret he didn't dare share. He simply sucked it up, and played his heart out. He used to tell the story of the game in which he started to lose consciousness from low blood suger in the on-deck circle with the bases loaded and the game on the line. He came to the plate- and there were three pitchers on the mound. Three pitches came toward the plate.
He hit the middle one into the center field bleachers for a game-winning grand slam homer. That one at bat was Ron Santo's career in a nutshell.
His courage in overcoming his illness and becoming, by James' reckoning, the sixth-best third baseman ever to play the game in spite of it is not the reason he belongs in the Hall of Fame. He belongs in the Hall of Fame because it is utterly obscene to omit him when so many lesser players are enshrined there- including lesser players who voted over and over to keep him out.
Ron Santo would not take kindly to being pitied, and I do not pity him. I did not pity him in life, despite the tough hand life dealt him in his lifetime affliction and his double amputation which resulted from it. I didn't even pity his repeated slighting by the game he loved and played so well. Ron Santo was too much of a winner to be pittied.
But I do pity baseball. I pity any game that can lionize so manner dopers and cheaters, while so shamefully slighting a geninue hero like Ron Santo. And t is nothing less than a pity that Santo was robbed of the satisfaction of getting his due during his lifetime. And the sorrow we who loved this man most of us never met- this humble, quiet, superlative baseball player and simple, down-to-earth Cub fan who brought joy to our hearts in latter years as the color man for Pat Hughes and the WGN Radio broadcast of Cubs games- only deepens our conviction that it would be utterly obscene not to enshrine Ron Santo in the Hall of Fame at the very next opportunity.
We'll miss you, Ron. We'll miss your groans and moans in the background of Pat's play-by-play when a Cub drops a fly ball or boots a grounder. We'll miss your infectious enthusiasm- the enthusiasm of a little boy- for the team to which you brought such credit, and for which you shared our love.
But we will never forget the spectacle of Number Ten charging down the third base line, scooping up a soft grounder bare-handed, and throwing off balance to gun down the batter at first, or diving to either side to grab a liner or a hard-hit grounder before somehow getting to his feet and making the play- or nailing the middle one of the three fastballs those three pitchers threw at him and sending it into the bleachers to win the game.
Ron Santo was one of baseball's greats, and neither the slights of lesser men nor death itself can diminish the man or his memory.
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