Ron Santo has hung up on the Hall of Fame and disconnected. After missing out again Wednesday in voting by his peers, the former Cubs third baseman will turn his attention elsewhere. I'm not going to worry about it anymore," Santo said. Where I am today isn't because I'm in the Hall of Fame or not. It's because of how I treat the fans and all people. Believe me, the only thing.
This past weekend I went to the 2005 Hall of Fame induction ceremony to see Ryne Sandberg inducted into baseball's most prestigious club. I came on the Jay Buckley baseball tour with my dad and two good friends.
We were able to see the Hall of Fame, Ryno inducted and played baseball among rabid Cub fans in Cooperstown, New York. If you'd like to look through the pictures from the trip, surf here.
Check back later too, I'll write more about the trip and my time with Ronny Woo-Woo, but for now I need to catch some sleep.
In my last post I said that I would talk more about my time in Cooperstown with Ronnie Woo-Woo. I took a 4 day bus ride out there with Ronnie and was thoroughly annoyed by his antics and incessant "woo-ing."
So rather than going into great detail, I'll just go with a story on the Chicago Tribune. It's short, so I'll post the entire text.
It wouldn't be a Cubs-related function without Ronnie "Woo-Woo" Wickers, and sure enough, the unofficial, ubiquitous and wholly annoying team mascot was in Cooperstown for Ryne Sandberg's induction. For part of it, anyway. From a vantage point to the left of the stage, Wickers, in full Cubs regalia and with blue spikes draped over his shoulders, greeted the introduction of Fergie Jenkins, Billy Williams and a handful of other Hall of Famers with his characteristic howling. As Wade Boggs was wrapping up his speech, Wickers moved closer to the stage for Sandberg's. That's when he was intercepted by Hall security and led away, and the grounds of the Clark Sports Complex remained a woo-free zone for the rest of the day.
Last year, in an ESPN.com chat session, I was asked which players not in the Hall of Fame were most worthy of induction. I threw out about six names, but other than Bert Blyleven and Ron Santo, I don't feel strongly about anyone.
Later this week, Michael Wolverton will make the case for Bert Blyleven, so I'm going to tackle Santo today. (Not literally; that would be mean.)
When Ron Santo retired, he was probably the second-best third baseman in the history of the game. We've had a bit of a golden age since then, with Mike Schmidt, George Brett and Wade Boggs, Hall of Famers all; but Santo, when he walked away after 1974, was behind only Eddie Mathews among the game's great third sackers.
Here's something else that's interesting: the list of players most comparable to Santo (available at baseball-reference.com) includes no Hall of Famers. That's not because he himself isn't worthy, but because a bunch of spots on that list are occupied by outfielders who didn't hit enough to be enshrined.
Santo's best comparison is Dale Murphy, who is a Hall of Fame candidate for what he did as a center fielder and right fielder. Santo has comparable career numbers to Murphy, but did his work as a Gold Glove third baseman in the greatest pitchers' era since the teens. Brian Downing, George Foster and Don Baylor, all lousy defensive outfielders or DHs, spent most of their careers in the middle of the lineup and put up career numbers comparable to Santo's. His other comps are third basemen who are inferior to him, but reasonable Hall candidates in their own right, guys like Graig Nettles and Ken Boyer.
Santo is unique in baseball history, a third baseman who hit like a left fielder while playing excellent defense at the hot corner.
Part of the reason Santo has been left out of the Hall of Fame is that the BBWAA has never quite figured out what to do with third basemen. They are historically underrepresented, and the change in the position over time has made it difficult to establish standards for what makes a Hall of Fame third baseman. Santo also lacked one signature skill on which to hang his case; he doesn't have 400 home runs or 3,000 hits or one major point his supporters could use to beat his candidacy home.
Actually, the biases Santo fights are more basic that that. Large parts of his value are hidden in areas that the BBWAA hasn't done a good job of recognizing: defense and walks. Santo was the NL's Gold Glove winner at third base from 1964 through 1968, and led the league in bases on balls in four of those five years. He was among the league leaders in OBP and slugging throughout the 1960s, finishing in the top 10 in both categories in every season from 1964 through 1967.
He was a reasonable MVP candidate throughout this time, with his chances being hurt every year by the lousy Cubs team around him. You simply couldn't win an NL MVP on a bad team in the 1960s; every NL MVP winner in that decade played for a team that won at least 90 games. The Cubs won 90 games just once, in 1969, a season that for some reason isn't remembered on the North Side as their best performance of the decade. Because Santo never appeared in the postseason and rarely was a factor in a pennant race, he didn't have the visibility of other players. This hurt him, probably unfairly, with the voters.
Santo never had a monster season, in part because his era wouldn't allow for them. Yes, he played in Wrigley Field, which helped his numbers, but the game-wide dampening of offense kept him from having the signature years, the 40-homer, 120-RBI campaigns that Hall of Fame voters love to see on a resumé. He was never the best player in the league -- there was this guy named Mays who made that impossible -- but you can make a case for him as the second-best player in the NL during his peak.
So Santo was one of the top few players in his league for about six years, the second-best third baseman in the game's history upon his retirement, and put up numbers at a defensive position that would have made him a borderline Hall of Fame candidate at an offensive one. That is a Hall of Famer.
The omission of Ron Santo is the most egregious mistake ever made by the Baseball Writers Association of America. They should have inducted Santo 20 years ago, and that they overlooked him throughout his 15 years on the ballot is a shame. I sincerely hope that the new Veterans Committee rights the error quickly. It will be a boon to their credibility and a honor for a man too long left outside the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.
Source: ESPN
You may recall the initial reaction when the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee was reconstituted to include all the living Hall of Famers. These voters were going to let admissions standards slip, and pretty much everybody who was a pal of a Hall of Famer and had worn spikes was going to be enshrined in Cooperstown.Right. And the Gobi Desert was going to turn into a tropical rain forest.
What has actually occurred? It was announced Wednesday that for the second consecutive vote, the new Veterans Committee elected nobody. Far from easing the entrance requirements, far from playing the old boys' network, the Hall of Famers are guarding Cooperstown's gates even more zealously than the baseball writers, who annually cast the primary ballot.
And guess what? This is both human nature, and, on balance, a good thing.
Now, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in some quarters and understandably so. You can look on the 25-man ballot this year and every single former player on the list has considerable merit. Arguments in favor of these candidates will run from the objective and the empirical to the sentimental and the emotional. These players all had meritorious careers. But were they Hall of Fame careers? That is in the eye of the beholder.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame is professional sports' most exclusive club. This is not like, for instance, the voting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in which a given number of candidates MUST be elected each year. The baseball Hall of Fame demands 75 percent of the vote in both the annual baseball writers' balloting, and in the Veterans Committee elections, which are held every other year.
The Chicago Cubs today announced that they will retire the uniform number — #10 — worn by longtime Cubs third baseman / broadcaster Ron Santo. The special pregame ceremony will take place prior to the Cubs' Sunday, September 28 (2003), affair against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Wrigley Field.
Santo will become the third player to be so honored by the Cubs, joining Ernie Banks (#14) and Billy Williams (#26).
Santo, who played for the Cubs from 1960-1973 and with the White Sox in 1974, is in his 14th season as a WGN Radio color commentator in 2003.
The former third baseman won five Rawlings Gold Glove awards during his 15-year major league career. He was a nine-time National League All-Star selection, batting .277 during his career with 342 home runs and 1,331 RBIs.
"Very few players are as closely connected with a franchise as Ron Santo is with the Chicago Cubs," said Andy MacPhail, the Cubs' president and chief executive officer. "His extraordinary playing career, his rabid following as a broadcaster and his many charitable endeavors for the Chicagoland area — where he has made his home for nearly 30 years — makes his contributions to this franchise special and unique. The Cubs' organization has been privileged to have been associated with someone of the spirit and tenacity that Ron brings to both the ballpark and to life."
Read the full article: Baseball Almanac
Santo not alone in taking snub by Hall of Fame hard
1 Comment Published by Scott Lewis February 26th, 2003 in News."Our boy didn't make it," Jim Dantona said.
I phoned Jim, the world's biggest Ron Santo fan, at his office in Simi Valley, Calif., a short while after leaving the disconsolate ex-Cub's home here Wednesday morning.
Dantona already knew the news. The mighty Santo had struck out.
"I don't care what the veterans committee says," was Dantona's indignant reaction. "I don't care what the sportswriters say. I don't care what anybody says. Ron Santo is a Hall of Famer."
A great many of us agree.
Unfortunately, not enough.
You would think having both legs amputated would be ample bad news in an old ballplayer's life. But not for Santo, who took this less gruesome setback.
