Plenty of Fight in This Old Cub (Ron Santo)

Sports Illustrated ^ | May 13, 2002 | Rick Reilly

[gubamyster]

Don't you dare feel sorry for Ron Santo just because in the last three years he's had eight operations on his right foot, a quadruple bypass, his right leg amputated and his heart stop cold while he was in a hospital bed.

[Molly Pitcher]

Thanks for posting this! Wish the sport had more such men!

[dighton]

Thanks to Ron Santo (#10?) and the Cubs for happy childhood afternoons at Wrigley Field.

[BluesDuke]

You'll be happy to know that Ron Santo made the first cut on the working list of eligibles for the new Veterans Committee to vote on for the Hall of Fame. And he deserves the honour.

[dglang]

I lived most of my life in Chicago and I have always been a Cub fan. The Cubs have had many great players, among them Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, etc.

The 1969 Cubs were one of the greatest teams that they ever had and considering that the Cubs have won more professional games that any other team of any type anywhere, that says a lot.

It is a shame that they didn't win the pennent and World Series in 1969 because they were an especially outstanding team that fell just a little short after a long season of playing day games that completely wore them out.

The entire starting infield of the 1969 Cubs were named to the starting team for the all star game that year. That included left to right, Santo, Kessinger, Beckert, and Banks, with an outfield that included Billy Williams who also was an all star starter.

Of ALL the Cubs that I have watched over the years, Ron Santo is my NUMBER ONE favorite, even ahead of Ernie Banks who himself is one of my favorites and a Hall of Fame member along with Williams.

Santo was both a GREAT defensive third baseman and a great offensive threat who truely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, especially since there are NO other third basemen there that can match his TOTAL contributions to the sport.

If I ever get to meet any current or former Cubs in person, Ron Santo is the one that I would most like to meet so that I can tell him how much I appreciated him.

While I was in the army from 1964 to 1967, stationed at Ft Benjamin Harrison Indiana, I would take my portable radio and find the best place to listen to the Cubs games.

During the summer while I was growing up, my father and I would usually go fishing almost every Sunday and we always had the portable with us to listen to the Cubs games.

I must say, that even now Ron Santo impresses me as a person who gives everything he has and makes the ultimate effort to be the very best he or anyone else can be. I truely and eagerly salute him.

[BluesDuke]

Quote of the month: "The Cubs are part of the cure."

[gremu]

As a parent of a diabetic daughter, I wonder if Santo is for or against therapeutic cloning? I don't want her to suffer the same fate as the courageous Cub. A clump of cells is not as important as my daugher's future.

[BluesDuke]

It is a shame that they didn't win the pennent (sic) and World Series in 1969 because they were an especially outstanding team that fell just a little short after a long season of playing day games that completely wore them out.

Durocher's Cubs, an especially insightful book by David Claerbaut, is the single best analysis as to why it was that the 1969 Cubs didn't win and the Leo Durocher Cubs (1968-72), an outstanding team, didn't win a thing in the years he managed the team. Also, hunt out Jim Bouton's I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad!, a splendid anthology of writing about baseball managers; it includes a legendary essay, "How Durocher Blew The Pennant," which was first published (in Look magazine) after the 1969 pennant race and opens the case that Mr. Claerbaut's book further buttresses - that their own manager was the predominant cause of the Cubs blowing a division title they could have won handily enough even when my Mets got hot midsummer.

...there are NO other third basemen there that can match (Santo's) TOTAL contributions to the sport.

That can only be said by someone who never saw Mike Schmidt play baseball - the objective case can be made (and has been - see Allen Barra's Clearing The Bases: The Greatest Baseball Debates of the Century) that he was the greatest third baseman in baseball history; he was certainly the best third baseman in the history of the National League, better than his worthy enough contemporary George Brett.

With the leather, Brooks Robinson and Clete Boyer could outplay Santo any day of the week. (You probably had to have seen Boyer play to know what I mean - he was actually better than his defencive statistics, which are impressive enough, would tell you; he's almost the Bill Mazeroski of third basemen in that what he has to sell is a ton of defence but, because he wasn't as productive with the bat as The Hoover, he barely got nods from the Hall of Fame voters, though perhaps Mazeroski's overdue election and Ozzie Smith's coming induction will make Boyer's case that much more feasible.)

Does it diminish Santo to say he wasn't quite as good with the leather as Robinson or Boyer, or with the bat as Mike Schmidt? (You may not realise this, but Schmidt and Santo - who were both outstanding fielders, though Schmidt's offencive performances tended as a rule to blind people to how good he was in the field - have almost identical fielding percentages, range factors, and points above their league's range factors.) Of course it doesn't; Ron Santo was the best third baseman in the National League in the 1960s and does deserve the Hall of Fame. And I have a feeling he's going to go in soon.

[Delphster]

I remember as a kid watching Ron Santo play minor league baseball for the San Antonio Missions when he was 19. Double A baseball in the Texas League. One day the Mission got a call from the Cubs and Ron Santo and Billy Willimas got called up with their manager Grady Hatton. I knew Ron and Billy would not be back. Billy went all the way to Hall o Fame and so should Ron

[Natty Bumppo@frontier.net]

Even as a die-hard White Sox fan, I was awed by Ron Santo's mastery of third base.

My favorite license plate(not mine) in my current state of Virginia reads: "CUBS N 7"

Of course my personal sign that the Apocalypse is upon us will be the Red Sox versus the Cubs in the series and the Cubs winning the seventh game.

[BluesDuke]

Of course my personal sign that the Apocalypse is upon us will be the Red Sox versus the Cubs in the series and the Cubs winning the seventh game.

Dan Shaughnessy, the Boston Globe writer who authored the engaging The Curse of the Bambino and At Fenway, had this to suggest in the latter book: the Curse's most likely break point would be the Red Sox meeting the Cubs in the World Series again (the last time, the Red Sox won - in 1918), the Series going to a seventh game, the game tied going to the bottom of the ninth - and then, poof! it's ended right there due to natural disaster and no one will ever know who would finish it on top.

I'm writing my first book now about the 1962 Mets, and if this gets published I plan to make my second book about the Cubs and the Red Sox, which I had actually begun working when the idea for the Mets project kind of bodyslammed me...

[Erasmus]

Of course my personal sign that the Apocalypse is upon us will be the Red Sox versus the Cubs in the series and the Cubs winning the seventh game.

Make that the White Sox and the Cubs and you've got a deal.

[Molly Pitcher]

Ron Santo made the first cut on the working list of eligibles for the new Veterans Committee to vote on for the Hall of Fame

He most certainly does!

dighton - During the 60s - Santo's most productive years - I was growing up in a southern suburb as a White Sox fan.

However, Santo and his fellow Cub, Ernie Banks, got my attention, too! LOL!

Just not as much as Luis Aparacio, Nellie Fox, Early Wynn, and many others...

[AppyPappy]

Your daughter will be fine if she sticks to a diet and meds and the clump of cells won't be necessary.

[gremu]

you mean just like Santo did?