ShareThisRon Santo was one year removed from high school in Seattle when he and his Double-A teammates faced the stern appraisal of baseball legend Rogers Hornsby. It was 1959. Hornsby hadn't collected a hit in more than two decades, a reality that did nothing to improve the grumpy disposition of the Chicago Cubs roving minor-league batting instructor.
"You'd better go back to shining shoes, because you can't hit," Hornsby told one player. Addressing another, he bristled: "You don't belong here. You belong on a bus taking you to Class C."
Santo, a former Seattle Rainiers bat boy, groundskeeper and hot-dog vendor, never lacked self-esteem. But then, he'd never endured the criticism of an ogre like Hornsby.
"If he says something mean to me," Santo whispered to his friend Billy Williams, "I think I'm gonna cry."
Hornsby finally stared down Santo, and said: "You can hit in the big leagues right now.
"And so can you," he added, nodding to Williams.
Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987, almost a quarter-century before the "Golden Era" committee announced its election of Santo on Monday. If the honor is bittersweet for Cubs fans old enough to remember the National League's equivalent of Brooks Robinson - Santo died a year ago, denied the phone call delivering him from Hall-of-Fame limbo -- it's an honor just the same.
"When the Hall of Fame called and said he had been elected," Santo's widow, Vicki, said on a conference call, "I was not only thrilled and so grateful. But when Billy Williams called and said, 'Vicki, we finally got it done,' it just made me cry.
"Ron had passed, but it was always his dream. To even have this come to him after his passing, it just shows you can't give up. That's what Ron was all about."
Baseball came easy to Santo, a nine-time All-Star third baseman blessed with a rare combination of power and patience.
Outside baseball, the world threw a succession of nasty pitches at him. A Type I diabetic who lost both lower legs to amputations, Santo never allowed his unfulfilled dream of a Hall pass to curtail the childlike enthusiasm he brought to the broadcasting booth.
Santo's case for Cooperstown provides a glimpse into the sometimes confusing, consistently controversial process of Hall-of-Fame voting.
The "Golden Era" committee -- a retooled version of the Veterans Committee -- installed him by a margin that qualified as a landslide: 15 of the 16 members saw Santo as worthy.
This is interesting, because in 1980, his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility, Santo was named on only 3.9 percent of the ballots returned by the baseball writers. In other words, without appearing in a single game, Santo's candidacy expanded from marginal afterthought to virtual unanimity.
What happened? A better grasp of advanced statistics, for one. Santo's ability to work the count - he led the National League in walks four times, and in on-base percentage twice - wasn't considered all that noteworthy in 1980.
In the meantime, Santo gained traction as a baseball ambassador. He became the symbol of everlasting-hope to a Cubs team, all while confronting health challenges that would've withered the spirit of a common man. Santo's courage -- and, really, there's no other word for it - mirrored the determination he used to cope with his disease as an athlete.
Between 1962 and 1969, while injecting himself with insulin on a daily basis, he played in at least 160 games. The only time this wasn't the case was 1966 -- the summer Cincinnati's Jack Fisher shattered his cheekbone with a beanball.
After surviving a pitch that could've killed him, Santo missed seven games. That's all: Seven.
Santo wasn't the most popular of players. Peers mocked his rah-rah attitude -- Pete Rose went through the same thing - and his brief ritual of celebrating Cubs victories by clicking his heels three times, during the summer of 1969, found him scorned by opponents: How dare a major leaguer celebrate winning with a brazen display of ... happiness?
Times change. Home-run trots, once defined by a solemn handshake from the third-base coach, now include chest bumps, hugs and kisses, the occasional curtain call.
Ron Santo's heel-clicking routine probably cost him a few swing votes on the veteran's committee, which is to say: it probably cost him the opportunity to make an acceptance speech in Cooperstown.
But his family will be there in July, and a loved one representing him will grace the podium, and 53 years after Ron Santo was spared the humiliation of crying in front of Rogers Hornsby, a lot of us will cry in remembrance of the tough guy who clicked his heels, and brought joy to the world.
(Contact John McGrath at john.mcgrath(at)thenewstribune.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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