Blast From the Past: RIP Ron Santo

The baseball heroes of my childhood are starting to die off. That is something that makes me sad. Ron Santo passed away this week at the age of 70, not a particularly advanced age in these times, but Santo overcame a lot to live that long.

Back in the 1960's, before free agency, most players, especially good ones played their entire careers with one team. I can still remember whole lineups from the '60's because they were the same year after year. Back then, the Cubs had a pretty good team, not as good as the Giants, of course, but a pretty good team. Their lineup looked something like this for several years running:

SS Don Kessinger
2B Glen Beckert
LF Billy Williams
1B Ernie Banks
3b Ron Santo
C Randy Hundley
CF Adolfo Phillips

They also had Ferguson Jenkins, Bill Hands, Ken Holtzman on the mound with Phil Regan, the "Vulture" as one of the first true closers in the game. Ron Santo was a key member of those Cubs teams, a perennnial all-star. He may have been the best third baseman in the game for the decade of the '60's. Many analysts believe that Santo is the best position player to have not made the Hall of Fame, a close call with pitcher Bert Blyleven for best overall.

What I remember most about Santo, and what comes out if you look up his stat page is his incredible consistency. For 13 seasons, from 1961-1973 he averaged 25 HR's with a BA of .280 and an OBP of .360 and never strayed too far from those numbers in any given season.

There are several things that have likely contributed to keeping Santo out of the HOF all these years. For one thing, he was not a flashy player and his consistency worked against him as he never led the league in anything except OBP while consistently finishing in the top 10 or top 20 in many categories. For another, the Cubs never went to the post-season in his career, something that gets a player a lot of attention outside their home city. The 1969 Cubs were probably the best team in the NL, but suffered an epic collapse down the stretch and lost the NL East title to the eventual WS champions, the Amazin' Mets.

Thirdly, he career was relatively short which held down some of the counting stats that get a player almost automatic consideration for the HOF. Santo may have contributed to the truncation of his career through some irrascibility. He often clashed with his Cubs Manager, Leo Durocher. After the 1973 season, in which Santo hit 20 HR's, the Cubs wanted to rebuild their team and had a young third baseman named Bill Madlock coming along. They worked out a trade to the Angels, but Santo exercised his newly acguired 10/5 privileges to veto the trade. He told the Cubs he would only approve a trade to one team, the crosstown Chicago White Sox. The White Sox gave up some pretty good players to get Santo, but didn't really have a place for him to play. They tried him at 2B, but he just didn't have the range for the position and struggled. He retired at the end of the season. Whether he could have put up a few more 20 HR seasons with the Angels and run up his counting stats, we'll never know, but had he done so, he would likely be in the HOF by now.

What makes Santo's story all the more remarkable is that he played his entire career and lived the vast majority of his life with type I diabetes. In case you are not aware, diabetes is incredibly destructive to the human body, gumming up the tiny arteries that supply blood cells carrying oxygen to the cells of the eyes, nerves, skin and kidneys causing those organs to fail long before their normal shelf life. I have personally seen many young diabetics with severe damage to their organs in their teens and twenties. Back in the 1960's, modern insulin preparations, insulin pumps, self testing of blood, and hemoglobin A1C's were unheard of. The primary goal of treatment was often to keep the patient out of hypoglycemia or insulin shock. As long as patients were not in diabetic ketoacidosis and not having hypoglycemia, most physicians thought they were doing great. For a baseball player to have a full career playing at a HOF or near-HOF level and then go on to live to age 70 and eventually die from another disease in that age is simply remarkable.

I don't know if Ron Santo will ever be voted into the HOF. If he is, it is a shame that he did not live to see that day. He is a member of my personal Hall of Fame, though.