An historic wrong righted: Ron Santo elected to the Hall of Fame!

What took so long?

Baseball stat guru Bill James regards Ron Santo as the eighty-seventh best player and the sixth best third baseman ever to play the game. Santo's statistics were better than most of the third basemen already in the Hall. He was a perennial Golden Glover and All-Star; for a stretch of time, only Brooks Robinson was his superior as an active major league third baseman. But somehow, when it came to inducting new members into baseball's Hall of Fame, Santo was always left out.

Perhaps it was jealously. Certain living Hall of Fame third basemen (who shall remain nameless) publicly- and lamely, in view of Santo's numbers- implied that he somehow didn't measure up; maybe they felt that their own legends would somehow be diminished by the Hall giving Santo his due.. My own theory is that because three members of the 1969 Cubs- "the greatest team that never won a pennant-" were already immortalized in the Hall, perhaps some felt that adding Santo to Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins would be to shower too much honor on a team which, after all, choked when the chips were down and never so actually much as made it to the post-season.

But other Hall of Famers who had played against him- Joe Morgan, Willie Mays, and Bill Mazerowski come to mind- passionately argued that Santo belonged in Cooperstown, too. His election was confidently expected in Chicago year after year. But tragically- inexcusably- Ron Santo died on December 3, 2010 without being recognized by the Hall as one of baseball's all-time best.

"This is my Hall of Fame," Santo said the day the Cubs retired his Number 10.

No, Ron. The Hall of Fame is your Hall of Fame.

Yesterday-allmost a year to the day after his death- fifteen of the sixteen members of the Hall's Veterans' Committee voted to admit Santo to Cooperstown. One of baseball's all-time greatest players has finally been granted the recognition he's due.

Santo was my favorite player during my teenage years. I wasn't fast or mobile enough to imagine myself as a shortstop or second baseman or outfielder. But I thought I had some power, and might be able to field a bit. And I loved the diving stops Ron would make on those rockets down the third base line, and that patented off-balance throw to first to nail a speedy runner after charging down the line and grabbing a grounder bare-handed. When I daydreamed about baseball, I daydreamed about being Ron Santo.

But Santo wasn't just a great player. He was a hero. He played most of his career with diabetes- and kept it a secret, afraid that revealing it might hurt his career.

One of my favorite stories was Santo's tale of the game against the Dodgers when he started to lose consciousness in the on deck circle because of low blood sugar. He toyed with simply swinging at the first three pitches, so that he could sit down. When he got to the plate, he saw three Bill Singers on the mound. When Singer delivered his first pitch, three balls approached the plate.

Santo swung at the middle one- and blasted it into the left field bleachers for a game-winning grand slam homer.

In later years, having suffered several heart attacks and lost first one leg and then the other to his disease, Santo became a beloved broadcaster for the Cubs. He and the smooth, sophisticated Pat Hughes went together like ham and cheese. Their interaction was perfect, reminiscent of Jack Quinlan and Lou Boudreau, the Cubs broadcast team I grew up with. Santo was a pure fan, and when- inevitably, it seemed- something went wrong to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Santo's wail of "NOoOoOoOoooo!" spoke for us all. Somehow, it was theraputic, an effective temporary analgesic for the pain symptomatic of one affected by Billy Goat Fever.

It's a day to celebrate. Even the American Spectator joined the celebration.

For many of us, the image of Ron Santo that will stick with us the longest is of his running off the field after yet another Cub victory early in the 1969 season, when the Bruins were making a shambles of the National League and it was an article of faith on the North Side that a world championship was inevitable. Yesterday, the news of Santo's election to the Hall made my day. All I can say is