The Chris Moeller Archives

The death of a baseball near-great

Former Cub Ron Santo's death on Thursday is a terrible occasion to write an essay focused on the man's shortcomings as a player and as a broadcaster. That's why I've waited until Sunday.

By every personal account and my own impressions, Santo was a very nice man, and was dealt some severe challenges in his life-- not-the-least of which apparently being that a large number of his baseball colleagues and paid-to-be-objective observers of the sport failed to share his opinion of his Hall of Fame credentials. The man made a 20-year post-playing career out of lobbying--begging-- to be enshrined at Cooperstown. This crusade led him into a career as a radio broadcaster, a position for which he was ill-prepared, staggeringly inept all the way to the end, and which made a mockery out of what small amount of qualification actually exists to ascend to such a position.

Many former ballplayers become broadcasters as their second career. Some are particularly erudite about the game and the spoken language, men such as Joe Morgan, Tim McCarver, or another former Cub, Rick Sutcliffe, but there's also an avenue to success in broadcasting if the erudition part is lacking. That avenue is "personality," or "color," if you will. Broadcasters like Dizzy Dean, Phil Rizzuto, or Mike "Moon Man" Shannon worked or continue to work for decades on radio and/or television despite poor grammatical skills and some mangled syntax because they're colorful. Examples of color during a broadcast would be Dean's frequent substitute of the word "slud" for the word "slid," or his Southern-fried expressions, or Shannon's one-time Sunday afternoon gem during the 1980s, "Today is Mother's Day, so for all of you mothers out there, happy birthday." As a broadcaster, Santo was a different type altogether. He was the type to speak very slowly; to start a sentence, then stop three or four words in and cause his audience to attempt to psychically empower him to find a way to finish it. His eyes would witness a piece of action on the field, his mouth would immediately react with a cheer or a groan, and then would begin the long and painful task of Ron's brain trying to formulate into coherent sentence structure what he had just seen.

Not everybody has the gift of broadcasting, and Santo must have known this, just as Tribune Media executives must have known it, but Santo had to be a broadcaster, you see. He was on a mission to get inducted into the Hall of Fame, and because of predecessors to the microphone like Don Sutton, Rizzuto, and Richie Ashburn, he knew that getting a highly-visible day-to-day job with the club was a terrific way to keep his name from fading into baseball obscurity. Cubs games on WGN Radio became a daily paid advertisement for Santo's Hall credentials. He was beloved by Cubs fans, we were frequently told (and certainly that was true). His longtime partner Pat Hughes would openly promote his candidacy, even introducing him frequently as "future Hall-of-Famer Ron Santo." The Illinois House of Representatives formally threw their support behind Santo's Hall bid in 2007 with House Bill 109, and he became the subject of a documentary film called "This Old Cub."

Because of Jiminy Cricket, it probably seems to most people like the world would be a better place if wishing hard enough for things could actually make them true, but it doesn't work that way, and for this we should be thankful. Ambitious delusion and self-promotion can make one's mind believe "that anything is possible," but if substituted for reality, would also make Newt Gingrich the smartest man in America. This is why we need the numbers.

It's true that too few third basemen have been enshrined at the Hall (we're only up to 11 that played in the Majors), but there would seem to be a lot of revisionism going on when it comes to Santo's career. A common argument is that Santo's career line of a .277 BA/342 HRs/1,331 RBIs, while admittedly modest, needs to be taken in context. He played in the era before steroids, a local radio man repeated on the air in Des Moines again Friday, and it's unfair, they say, to compare Santo to players of today with their "inflated" numbers. But in truth, everybody is already not comparing him to today's players in terms of raw statistics. If they were, the last of these debates would have taken place years ago. The truth is: his stats are nowhere close to today's version of a borderline candidate (say, Rafael Palmeiro or Edgar Martinez). He has Gary Gaetti's career power numbers combined with Bob Horner's batting average.

For what it's worth, and this is vitally important, Ron Santo actually was on a steroid for much of his career-- a defined chemical structure called Wrigley Field. Santo's playing career may have overlapped an era of pitching dominance in the National League, but he was not playing his home games in the cavernous multi-purpose stadiums like Busch Stadium, Olympic Stadium, or the Astrodome that helped to make it the era of pitching dominance that it was. In half of his games, he was swinging right handed in a Wrigley Field that has a painted 365 foot designation in the left field power alley (and former Cubs manager Jim Riggleman once remarked that even that length of distance probably couldn't hold up to review). The home and away splits for Santo's career (which was spent with the Cubs for all but one season) looks like this--

HOME: 1,136 games, 4,075 at-bats, 659 runs, 1,217 hits, 216 hrs, 743 rbis, .296 batting avg.
AWAY: 1,107 games, 4,069 at-bats, 479 runs, 1,046 hits, 126 hrs, 588 ribs, .257 batting avg.

Friendly Confines, indeed. With this type of home and away split, he should become an honorary member of the Red Sox (see Yastremski, Carl; Rice, Jim; Boggs, Wade). This might explain why Santo's career looked so much better to Cubs fans than to everyone else.

Santo was considered one of the top third basemen of his era, with five Gold Gloves and 9 All-Star appearances, but these are era-specific numbers that are inflated as much as any "steroid-inflated" numbers. It was much easier to make an All-Star team when the National League had 10 teams than it is now that there are 16. This is a distinction nobody ever talks about when comparing between eras. In this case, the Gold Gloves and All-Star selections are impressive, but like his offensive numbers, they make Santo a candidate for the Hall-of-Very Good. Neither category has recognized historic precedents that are automatic for induction.

If a guy plays 15 years and puts up Hall numbers that have him right on the borderline, then we do have the option of looking at those additional ballgames, those moments during the year when baseball games count for more, commonly referred to as "the postseason." This is where "This Old Cub" is "par for the Cubs." In other words, he never played in a postseason game. A Ron Santo team never finished closer than 5 games to first place, and only twice (both in the post-1967 divisional seasons of '68 and '69) did they finish within 10 games. The guy simply never played in a truly meaningful game. Those videos where you see him literally kicking his heels on the diamond during a "pennant race," those games were being played in July.

If Santo were inducted, that would make him the fourth member in the Hall from the infamous 1969 Cubs team that nosedived in August. This would not be a Hall of Fame record for a non-winning team, mind you, but all four in this case (the others already in are Ferguson Jenkins, Ernie Banks, and Billy Williams) would have been inducted primarily for their play with the Cubs during that same period of the late '60s/early '70s, and all the team had to show for it was about half-a-pennant race. It's completely out of proportion. The Big Red Machine of the mid-70s, by way of comparison, only has three Hall of Famers. If Cubs officials and their rooters succeed in getting Santo into Cooperstown, they'll probably just move on to Don Kessinger as their next initiative.

Contrast Santo's career numbers to those of former Cardinals third baseman Ken Boyer. Boyer's career overlapped much of Santo's-- he played from 1955 to 1969. In roughly 200 fewer games, Boyer batted ten points higher at .287, scored only about 34 fewer runs, hit 282 home runs, and drove in 1,141. He walked less often than Santo, but struck out fewer times too. Like Santo, he won five Gold Gloves at the hot corner, and played in 7 All-Star Games (reminder: to Santo's 9). But additionally, Boyer won the National League's Most Valuable Player award in 1964, and propelled the Cards to the '64 Championship, adding a memorable exclamation to his career with a 6th inning grand slam down three runs off the Yankees' Al Downing in Game 4 at Yankee Stadium, then following it up with a three-hit, three-run performance in the decisive, victorious Game 7.

I wouldn't argue that Boyer is worthy of the Hall either, despite a similarly-very good, but not great career. Meanwhile, however, only one of the two men-- Santo-- has an enormous Hall-of-Fame-promotional machine behind his candidacy. His long career with essentially just one team, and a life and career filled with physical challenges have made his Hall crusade a cause celebre. You're considered cruel if you don't think this man deserves what he so desperately wants. Boyer, for his part, didn't have to contend with the same health issues that Santo did during his playing career (though some back problems actually did lead to a shortened tenure), but he hasn't been able to promote his candidacy during a long retirement either since he was dead of cancer at the age of 51 in 1982.

Santo succeeded in having his Associated Press obituary state that he was "regarded as one of the best players never to gain induction" into the baseball Hall, which is an exaggeration in itself if we recount that he got only 4% of support his first year on the ballot, disappeared from the ballot for four years, and didn't resurface again as a popular candidate until he started his high-profile lobbying efforts. ESPN Chicago ran a number of Santo-related stories this week in tribute to the man's life and career (I stopped linking at five articles), and the news of his passing will no doubt give even a modest boost to Santo's Hall chances beginning already this winter. Boyer's chances remain much slimmer though. And ESPN St. Louis doesn't exist.

Santo deserves great credit for being a relatable player/former player. He was always a team guy, by every account. Fans liked the fact that he demonstrably enjoyed winning, though his endurance in that respect was never seriously challenged. He certainly used his celebrity to tremendously charitable ends, and was heroic in facing his obstacles in life head-on. Yet it was always so sad to me-- not that he didn't make it into the Hall of Fame during his life-- but that he seemed to need that external validation so badly.

A lot of Cubs fans would probably tell me square up now that "it's a Cubs thing." I'm not capable of understanding what Santo meant to the Cubs organization. But that's quite clear he meant a lot, and the fandom part is universal. I love a former Cardinal like Willie McGee so much that I would want any potential honor for him that I could help achieve for him as one of his legions of potential fans/advocates. As he faced each new rejection from the Hall voters, Santo often claimed that he was giving up, that he didn't care if he was ever enshrined. He would be getting honored in some fashion on the field by the Cubs, and that honor from the Cubs "was his Hall of Fame," he would say. But then January would roll around and we would hear another news story about how he was in tears at home when the call wouldn't come. But maybe that's part of the whole "Cubs thing" that's tough to grasp. Maybe the individual awards and accolades become all-important when there aren't any championships to share. A new Hall of Famer is the biggest thing going for the Cubs franchise every time they get to add a new one. A very good player has to be recognized by others as one of the all-time greats or it's not enough. They become more than just the awards, they're little pennant and championship consolations. Miserable saps.

Say, did you know that Don Kessinger scored 109 runs for that '69 Cubs team? That's almost great.

posted by CM @ 4:05 PM