When former Major League Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti decided to ban Pete Rose from baseball for gambling, he set the precedent that character was — in some way — a prerequisite for Hall of Fame enshrinement. Many people have since pointed out the irony in the inclusion of many other morally questionable players, something I call the Ty Cobb Exception. However, the true irony in the MLB's election process is not that some "classless" players have slipped through the cracks and into bronze molds, but rather that many of the men voting have since proven to be some of the worst examples of high character.
Ron Santo was officially inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on December 5, 2011. A man of the absolute highest morality and class, his HOF merits had been debated for the past three decades by fans inside and out of Chicago. A career .277 hitter, Santo belted 342 home runs in the Era of the Pitcher. His average 162 game season projects to 24 home runs and 96 RBI — numbers that any Steroid Era general manager would toss 80 million dollars at. He earned five Gold Gloves and made nine all-star appearances.
Simply put: he was a great baseball player.
Granted, an argument could conceivably be waged that on numbers alone he may not have transcended "great" into the "legendary" status that separates HOFers from all-stars. However, when looking beyond the hard and fast data, it becomes clear that Santo's exclusion from the Hall should be viewed as indictment to the voters — most notably the laughable Veterans' Committee.
First, let me recap how the HOF induction process works for those of you that may be unfamiliar. A retired player becomes eligible for induction once he has been out of the game for five years. Once the eligibility activates, the player has the next 15 years to be voted in by a panel of sportswriters — whose votes are released to the public. If a player is named on 75% or more of the voter ballots, he's in. If he fails to garner even 5% of a vote, he is disqualified from future elections. Should a player fall somewhere in between those marks for 15 years, his only hope is to be voted in by a panel of ex-players who are currently in the HOF, known informally as the Veterans' Committee.
As of 2011, a slew of changes have revamped the Veterans' Committee process. However, for the purposes of looking at Santo's plight, the previous process is more relevant, seeing as how it was these men who aided and abetted the tragedy that left Ronnie on the outside looking in.
Santo did not garner enough support during his initial 15 years on the ballot, so his judgment was left to this glorified club of retirees. Sadly, the former members of the Veterans' Committee did not view the Hall as a museum of baseball history, but rather some sort of secret fraternity into which they could freely (and randomly) select their friends. They passed up Ron Santo for nearly two complete decades, voting him down every other year since 1993.
In the meantime, while Santo's on-field credentials did not worsen, his off-field merits made his exclusion all-the-more glaring. The most notable accomplishments for Santo were charity efforts he immersed himself in for diabetes research. He played his entire MLB career with type 1 diabetes during an era when little was known about the debilitating condition. Not only did he refrain from using his circumstances as an excuse, he wanted the diagnosis to be kept secret.
"I'd just as soon have [the doctor] keep it to himself," Santo was quoted as saying in an interview. "I wanted to prove that I could play baseball with diabetes."
He served as an inspiration to many subsequent athletes and professionals who learned that diabetes was not a death sentence.
Additionally, he became one of the most memorable — though not the most articulate — broadcasters in the history of one of baseball's oldest franchises. He served as the color man for Cubs broadcasts on WGN Radio from 1990 until his death in 2010. Listening to Santo was an absolute treat — nobody expressed the agony of being a Cubs fan in quite the same way³. He was the self-proclaimed "biggest Cubs fan in the world" — and nobody ever disputed this as anything other than fact.
Lastly, he was notoriously one of the kindest men associated with baseball that a fan could ever meet. Speaking personally, I remember meeting Ron Santo in 1993 when I was a boy of eight. We were at the Sheraton East Hotel in San Diego, California and several of the Cubs players, coaches, and broadcasters were returning from Jack Murphy Stadium after a night game. Upon seeing Harry Caray eating dinner at a table next to Ryne Sandberg, I begged my father to interrupt the two of them for autographs. Instead, my dad walked right over to a man standing alone in the front lobby.
What proceeded from there were five minutes of the most colorful, amusing, and passionate conversation I've ever witnessed. My dad reminisced about 1969's collapse and, unlike most professional athletes who dole out apathetic, contrived, euphemistic bullshit, Santo sounded like a man whose brother had passed away. Those losses ate away at him, even after nearly a quarter century.
When it was over, he shook the hands of my dad, my brother, and me, signed our baseball, and left me with the indelible impression that can only stem from one-of-a-kind charisma. He was that kind of ambassador to the game.
So apart from being a stellar player, Santo was a philanthropist, a broadcaster, and an ambassador to the game. The only quality that changed between his 2009 "no" vote and his 2011 induction was his living status. Ron Santo died on December 3, 2010.
My question to the Veterans Committee is this: how were his credentials not good enough 20 years ago — or even two years ago — but suddenly are? How does death qualify someone more for the HOF?
Santo, a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, never could hide the pain of rejection each year he was denied. A documentary entitled This Old Cub painted the picture of a man who understood the significance of being elected, truly felt he deserved it, and desperately wanted it. After living a life filled with pain and struggle — including fighting juvenile diabetes throughout his adulthood, having both legs amputated due to his condition, and ultimately succumbing to bladder cancer — the least that the voters could have done was to realize that, if his induction is inevitable, they might as well allow a fellow human being to enjoy the achievement.
He once was hilariously quoted as saying, "I don't want to be elected post-humorously." The true humor of the statement can only be appreciated by those familiar with Santo — mainly because he misspoke with such conviction that you did not care that he made a mistake.
The cowards of the Veterans Committee should be humiliated that they deprived one of baseball's great men the opportunity to relish his legacy. Hiding behind their confidential votes, many argued that Santo lobbied too hard for his own induction. Why should that even matter? He wasn't the one voting. Did it make voters feel better to leave him out? Who knows. What is clear is that enough of the voters lacked the human decency to make their selections objectively and instead seemed to bask in the glory of robbing a deserving peer of joy.
I'm glad that Ron Santo is a HOFer. He has deserved it for a long time and he certainly still deserves it. In an era when the biggest debate is over which steroid users should make the Hall5, it certainly wouldn't have done baseball any harm to give a competitor who succeeded with a performance inhibitor — rather than performance enhancers — his due.
If character was the only prerequisite for entrance into the Hall of Fame, then Ron Santo would have been a first-ballot inductee. His exclusion, however, seems to be proof that the "character" argument is intended for convenience rather than anything else. Part of me hopes whoever gives Santo's induction speech makes the voters who denied him feel the shame they deserve for their arrogant part in this debacle. But he or she will not. He or she will relish the moment, fawn over a well-deserved man, and bring tears to the eyes of those in attendance.
Just as classy as — though undoubtedly more eloquently than — Santo himself would have done.
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