Posted on 12/03/2010 11:53:33 AM PST by BluesDuke
There will be many measures of the man remembered this weekend and beyond, but perhaps one above many, if not most, should tell you a few things about Ron Santo, who died at 70 Thursday in Arizona.
At a reunion of the 1969 Cubs, held at catcher Randy Hundley's annual fantasy camp, twenty years after their run at the National League East title collapsed against the Miracle Mets' onrush, the abrasive manager of that team apologised publicly to the nine-time All-Star third baseman who was considered as much the soul of the team as Ernie Banks was its heart.
"I want to apologise to Ron Santo," said Leo Durocher, who hadn't been very well known as a man apologetic over, well, just about anything. "I made a mistake, and I've been wanting to say so to Ronnie and his family for the longest time."
Durocher alluded to a 1971 incident involving a day in Santo's honour at Wrigley Field. That year's Cubs were riddled by injuries, aging, and occasional indifference, and Durocher himself---said to have been feeling embattled following a collapse down the 1970 stretch---was feeling defencive enough under the lash of rumours that his days managing the Cubs were numbered.
By August, the Cub clubhouse was a mess and Durocher was viewed as the culprit. "The tension between Leo and the players kept building," said Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins. "Guys were saying all kinds of things behind his back, things that could not be said to the press because to do so would have been to write your own ticket to be traded."
Durocher reacted by becoming even more of a clubhouse tyrant than he normally was, going far enough as to drag any dirt he thought he had on a player out into the clubhouse for one and all to hear, as well as his customary overuse of tired or injured players and his belittling the few young players that year's Cubs had.
Come 23 August, with the Cubs still four and a half out but having lost a pair to the Houston Astros, Durocher called a clubhouse meeting. After ripping into a few players for actual or alleged non-hustling, outfielder/first baseman Joe Pepitone, who'd enjoyed something of a resurgence with the Cubs, stood up for Santo, who had fallen into a slump and asked out of batting practise in a bid to break it. When Durocher consented, Santo went on a small tear, and Durocher had accused him of shenking batting practise.
Santo, who had been Durocher's most stubborn loyalist to that point, finally exploded. And Durocher finally dropped his bomb, accusing Santo himself of basing his pre-season contract holdout in fair enough portion on whether the Cubs would give him a Day in his honour as they'd done to Banks and another Hall of Famer in waiting, outfielder Billy Williams.
The clubhouse practically exploded. Pepitone---a shaky soul at best, whose life and career had been marked by jaw-dropping talent dissipating in a morass of emotional instability that tied to his abusive Brooklyn upbringing---called it the worst thing he'd ever seen in baseball and accused Durocher of destroying Santo.
It took the intercession of general manager John Holland to repair some of the damage Durocher had inflicted between Santo and some teammates, and it took the intercession of coach Joe Amalfitano to get Santo and Durocher to patch it up, while it took what Jenkins called "an armed truce" ("The unspoken agreement between Leo and the players was to talk to each other only if the situation demanded it") to get Durocher, who'd threatened to resign right then and there, to ride it out down the stretch.
Ron Santo Day went better in the ceremonies than on the field for the Cubs; while Santo got his wish and the proceeds of the event went to the Diabetes Association of Chicago, the Cubs lost to the Atlanta Braves, 4-3. They slipped further out of the race and the speculation ramped up that Durocher's days were numbered.
They were. The 1972 Cubs opened with a 2-10 slump before going on a 32-12 tear and falling back into a 12-22 slump approaching the All-Star break. Durocher was canned, Whitey Lockman was named his successor, and the Cubs went 39-26 under his leadership to finish second behind the division-winning Pirates.
Santo had bounded back from a badly-bruised 1971 to post an on-base percentage (.391) that was one of his four career bests; he was five wins above a replacement player and made his eighth All-Star team. But he was beginning to slide back irrevocably in general plate production, though he was still one of the National League's best at third base.
After a 1973 in which his on-base percentage and his overall value slipped somewhat dramatically (he was only 2.1 wins above a replacement player), he was traded to the crosstown White Sox to finish his career after one season.
But he would remain a beloved Chicago figure, going on to become a Cub radio broadcaster whose unapologetic on-the-air rooting for the team somehow became endearing where most such broadcasters' homerisms became excrutiating and annoying.
He'd played a career with diabetes and, because the home monitoring glucometers so widespread today were unavailable in his day (he was diagnosed with the disease at age 18), he ended up losing both legs below the knees. He also wrestled with cancer that forced him to surgeries on his eyes, his heart, and his bladder. And he never flagged in his love for baseball and the Cubs, whose broadcast team he joined in 1990---two years after Leo Durocher's stupefying apology.
Santo had also become something of an annual sentimental favourite for Hall of Fame election himself. When Bill James revised and updated his Historical Baseball Abstract in 2001, he concluded Santo was the sixth-best third baseman of all time. (He ranked Brooks Robinson number seven; the final verdict on Chipper Jones's career wasn't even close to coming.) He was probably the best all-around third baseman in baseball from 1963 through 1971, though there's certainly a case to make that he'd have won about four less Gold Gloves (he won five) if either Brooks Robinson or Clete Boyer had played in the National League during Santo's peak.
I have been myself a no-apologies advocate for Santo's Cooperstown enshrinement. In fifteen such votes by the Baseball Writers Association, Santo's best showing was the 43.1 percent he received in 1998. He also didn't make it in four Veterans Committee votes since; his 61 percent in the Veterans Committee's 2007 vote led all candidates but it fell short of the required 75 percent. He may not have been the absolute greatest third baseman ever to play the game, but he was the no-questions-asked greatest third baseman ever to play for the Cubs.In the 1940s, many players were selected to the Hall of Fame who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo, let alone nowhere near as good as Willie Mays. Players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1950s, players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1960s, players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1970s (lots of them), players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1980s, and players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1990s. It is preposterous to argue that the Hall of Fame standard is Ted Williams, after six decades of honouring players like Tommy McCarthy (1946), Rabbit Maranville (1954), Elmer Fick (1963), Dave Bancroft (1971), George Kell (1983), and Tony Lazzeri (1991). The Ted Williams/Bob Gibson/Honus Wagner standard for Hall of Fame selection has never existed anywhere except in the imaginations of people who don't know anything about the subject . . . Ron Santo towers far above the real standard of the real Hall of Fame.
---Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. (New York: The Free Press, 1971).
Santo had been a no-apologies advocate for the Cubs on and off the field. Like the late commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti in the abstract (and the particular, when he was in Fenway Park), Santo knew baseball is about rooting, caring, brimming, suffering.
If he wasn't the greatest player ever to wear a Cub uniform, he was probably in a dead heat (with Ernie Banks) for being the most beloved. If he wasn't the greatest broadcaster ever to sit behind a microphone in a ballpark broadcast booth, he was certainly the most deeply embraced among any Cub broadcaster not named Harry Caray.
If and when Santo made the Hall of Fame while still on this island earth, longtime and star-crossed Cub pitcher Kerry Wood once wrote (in ESPN: The Magazine), "if the schedule lets us I'm going to be there for the ceremony. He's the epitome of Chicago baseball. He's still part of the team. He lives and dies with it. In fact, I think we've put him in the hospital a few times. He should get in just for that."
Once, when Santo was unable to travel with the team during the 2003 postseason because of an illness, Wood hung a Cub uniform with Santo's retired number (10) in the visitor's dugout in Turner Field. The Cubs beat the Atlanta Braves that night to get somewhere they hadn't been in two decades, the National League Championship Series they'd lose in heartbreak style.
They may not have put Santo in the hospital a few times, but then if they made him want to reach for the rye bottle now and then, a) you wouldn't have blamed him, but b) he'd never have admitted it.
Santo resigned himself to the prospect of posthumous Hall of Fame election. At least he didn't have to resign himself to strictly posthumous adoration. Once he'd been the soul of the Cubs. He'd long since become the soul of their fans.
Ron was a great player. God bless him and his family.
PING A ROO
Ping
Wow, I remember hearing his name almost every day as a kid.
Especially on Saturdays when I’d get a haircut.
RIP Ron!
There was no ‘stretch run collapse’ of the 1970 Cubs. ‘69 for sure, but not the ‘70 outfit.
Game Called. Across the field of play
the dusk has come, the hour is late.
The fight is done and lost or won,
the player files out through the gate.
The tumult dies, the cheer is hushed,
the stands are bare, the park is still.
But through the night there shines the light,
home beyond the silent hill.
Game Called. Where in the golden light
the bugle rolled the reveille.
The shadows creep where night falls deep,
and taps has called the end of play.
The game is done, the score is in,
the final cheer and jeer have passed.
But in the night, beyond the fight,
the player finds his rest at last.
Game Called. Upon the field of life
the darkness gathers far and wide,
the dream is done, the score is spun
that stands forever in the guide.
Nor victory, nor yet defeat
is chalked against the players name.
But down the roll, the final scroll,
shows only how he played the game.
-Grantland Rice
Here are just a few reasons why:
There was no ‘stretch run collapse’ of the 1970 Cubs. ‘69 for sure, but not the ‘70 outfit.If we count the stretch beginning around 3 August to the end of the regular season, the 1970 Cubs overall---from 3 August forward---were 30-27. Barely above .500.
Now . . . the Cubs had one three-game win streak (18-19 September, including a doubleheader sweep of the Montreal Expos) that kept them within a game and a half of the first-place Pirates, clawing back somehow after having been as far out as six games in mid-August. Their longest win streak of any kind from 3 August to the end was three games; they did it three times, including twice within seven games, but then they went 5-6 between three-streak numbers two and three.
What was the record after that third three-game win streak? 4-7, finishing five games out of first place, not to mention spending three days in third place and falling six games out after losing a second straight to the Mets in the final series of the season; they won their final two games to get to five games out.
It may not have been as epic a stretch fall as the 1969 team experienced, but a 4-7 finish in the final eleven games of the season for a team barely playing .500 baseball following the All-Star break---and spending September itself going 14-13---certainly does qualify as a collapse of some proportion for a team that spent two months (21 April through 23 June) in first place and yet sitting two and a half games out of first when the previously defined stretch drive began in earnest.
(Note: The 1971 Cubs had a twelve-game losing streak---beginning when they were four and a half games up---from 21 June, when Steve Carlton and Bob Gibson beat them to sweep a doubleheader, through 30 June, when Gibson beat them again; the streak was highlighted, if you will, by three doubleheader losses. It probably wasn't a great idea for the Cubs to be playing three doubleheaders in nine days, but that losing streak left them four and a half out of first place. Several times from that point forward, the Cubs were as far as six games out. They were still reasonably in the race, but you could argue that they didn't really recover all that well from that losing streak.)
There was a special relationship between those Banks-Williams-Santo teams and the fans. The core of the team stayed together a long time. The players were not far removed from the fans, economically and socially, like they are now. Almost all the games were televised on free TV. They were like family. And the players from those teams kept their friendships over 40 plus years--Santo, Beckert, Hundley, and the rest. In all of those respects, the closest parallel I can think of would be the Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the late '40s through mid '50s.
Ron Santo had an emotional connection with the people of Chicago, as a player and broadcaster, more than anyone else. He wore his emotions on his sleeve. His physical struggles, and the struggles of the team--and his upbeat optimism in the face of all of it--made him even more beloved.
As a player, Ron Santo belongs in the Hall of Fame. A long time ago. One of the ten best third basemen of all time. Offensively and defensively, he was the best in his league in his era, an era of significantly lower offensive numbers than later on.
The two guys I'm most upset about not getting in the Hall during their lifetime--when everyone knew that their days were numbered--are Ron Santo and Buck O'Neil, Cub coach (first black coach in the majors) and scout (Banks, Williams, Brock) and champion of the Negro Leagues. Both Santo and O'Neil were GREAT ambassadors for the game with terrific personalities. I've never been to Cooperstown, but I was planning to make my trip when Ron Santo finally got voted in, to see him standing there. Now that will not happen.
What a damn shame that the people who do selections for Baseball's Hall of Fame have overlooked Ron Santo all these years. Maybe now, he will finally get his due.I'm as strong an advocate of Ron Santo for the Hall of Fame as anyone. I enunciated why in my original essay. But let's not exaggerate, shall we?Here are just a few reasons why:
1. Heart and soul of the Cubs who played a leading role in transforming them from the laughing stock of the National League in 1960 into a consistent contender by the end of that decade.
2. Consistent gold glove winner, year after year. Not quite as good as Brooks Robinson, who was probably the best third base gloveman in all baseball history, but Santo more than outshined him on offense.
3. Better lifetime batting average than Mike Schmidt, probably the best third basemen offensively in all baseball history. This is quite impressive when you consider that most of Santo's career was during the "pitchers era" and most of Schmidt's was afterward.
* He wasn't a consistent Gold Glove winner "year after year"---he won only five and, I say again, he'd have won four less if either Brooks Robinson or Clete Boyer had been playing in the National League in those seasons.
* Brooks Robinson actually wasn't the best third base glove in baseball history---Clete Boyer may have been. Boyer actually has slightly better defencive statistics than Robinson, and he was at least as spectacular at third base as Robinson was. (I saw them both play, and when Boyer died my piece about him was called "The Alba Acrobat," named for his hometown, and I wasn't just being rhetorical---I saw Boyer make plays that would have calcified the spines of mortal men, just as I saw The Hoover make such plays.) The main reason you don't hear much about Clete Boyer is because, in a nutshell, Boyer couldn't hit with a garage door. The main reason he was able to play major league baseball as long as he did play (and for a few Yankee pennant winners and World Series champions) is because he was saving a truckload of runs with his play at third base.
* It might surprise you to discover that Mike Schmidt hit in damn near the same conditions in which Ron Santo hit, and Schmidt's home park was slightly tougher to hit in than Santo's. From the following tabulation, I eliminated both Santo's final major league season, because he spent it in the American League; and, Schmidt's final major league season (1989), because he retired 42 games into the season saying, essentially, he wasn't the player he used to be (even though he was either leading the National League in runs batted in or within the top three at the time). Now, hear (well, see) this:
The National League's ERA during Ron Santo's career in the league: 3.59.Think about that. Santo's career included the Year of the Pitcher in 1968, when the National League's ERA fell to 2.99 for the season, dropping 39 points from the 1967 league ERA; Schmidt's career included a bigger drop in the league's ERA from season to season, a 63 point drop from 1987 to 1988. This one might surprise you, too: only once did the National League's ERA go over 4.00 during Schmidt's career . . . but it happened twice during Santo's.
The National League's ERA during Mike Schmidt's career in the league: 3.63.
I'm not convinced that a four point difference in the league ERA weighs that favourably in Santo's favour or against Schmidt's favour.
Mike Schmidt wasn't just the best-hitting third baseman in baseball history---he also earned ten Gold Gloves. (You could clean up if you get a bet down that that's the stat people are most likely to forget about Schmidt.) Mike Schmidt produced 208 runs per 162 games lifetime (Santo: 178) while playing one of the two or three most physically demanding positions on the field and winning ten Gold Gloves at the position, and he wasn't even close to winning them with his bat the way many Gloves are, alas, awarded. His fielding average was well enough above his league; his range factors per nine innings and his range factors per game were also above league average by decent margins. Santo's factors also came in above league average, though not exactly as far above as Schmidts. On the other hand, both Schmidt and Santo led their leagues in double plays at their position six times. This actually bodes well for Santo considering he didn't play on artificial turf. On the other hand, it's arguable that Schmidt had a tougher field condition to work with because he played on the artificial turf, which a) tends to speed up the sharp grounders spinning your way, challenging your reflexes just that much more acutely; and b) isn't even close to being as forgiving on the body (just ask Vladimir Guerrero) as grass.
Santo may have a better lifetime batting average than Schmidt . . . but not by all that much. (Ten points above Schmidt, to be precise.) And Schmidt gave his teams more bang for the buck than Santo did while hitting in a tougher home park in which to hit. Ron Santo averaged 80 walks per 162 games lifetime . . . but Mike Schmidt averaged 102 per 162. Given the choice between facing either man, I'm pretty sure pitchers would rather face Ron Santo than Mike Schmidt. Santo averaged 26 doubles per 162 games . . . but Schmidt averaged 27. Schmidt averaged four triples per 162 to Santo's five. However, Santo's lifetime stolen base percentage (.460) is way below Schmidt's: .654. And Santo's on-base percentage (.362) is well enough below Schmit's .380, and Schmidt wasn't just reaching base with those conversation piece home runs of his. Pitchers feared him far more than they ever feared Ron Santo. Come to think of it, hitters feared their rips up the third base line finding Schmidt's glove far more than they ever feared them finding Santo's.
None of which means Santo doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. He does. It's an absolute scandal that he isn't in the Hall of Fame yet, it's an absolute scandal that he wasn't elected in his lifetime. He was the best all-around third baseman of his era. If you had to take him strictly as a hitter, Eddie Mathews and Ken Boyer (who also deserves the honour, by the way) would have left him behind. If you had to take him strictly as a fielder, Brooks Robinson and Clete Boyer would have left him in the previous county. But if you take him all-around, he was the best of the 1960s. That counts for Cooperstown just as much as it counts that you might be the best at your position all-around, all-time.
I'm also as big an admirer of Santo's "ambassadorship for the game" and work on behalf of diabetes as anyone. And for the Hall of Fame it means three things: jack, diddley, and squat.4. Great ambassador for the game, both in the broadcast booth and in raising money for Juvenile Diabetes research, a disease which Santo suffered but kept quiet about until near the end of his career.
There have been boatloads of players who've been great ambassadors for the game who've also done great work on behalf of grave illness or other suffering deep of life's hardships. And none of that got a lot of players into the Hall of Fame whose performance on the field didn't justify putting them there. Curt Schilling isn't going to the Hall of Fame because he's a major mover in the battle against Lou Gehrig's disease. Ted Williams didn't get into the Hall of Fame because he helped salvage the Jimmy Fund and remained a faithful supporter for life. Jamie Moyer (assuming he retires any time before he's of Social Security age) isn't going to the Hall of Fame, period---and he won't be omitted because of his work with a network of camps for children who have suffered parental bereavement before they turn to the end of their teen years, he'll be omitted because he was a good pitcher, sometimes an excellent pitcher, but he wasn't even close to being a great pitcher.
I'd love to see one of the diabetes foundations renamed for Ron Santo. I'd love to see them rename the Wrigley Field radio booth for him, the way I think they renamed the television booth for Harry Caray, the way the Dodgers renamed the Dodger Stadium press room for Vin Scully.
But that's not what makes Ron Santo's Hall of Fame case. He belongs in the Hall of Fame strictly on his own merit as a baseball player, strictly for having been the best all-around third baseman of his time.
Especially with regard to the comparisons of Clete Boyer and Brooks Robinson. I always though Clete got shortchanged because Robinson played on more World Series bound teams. I believe one of the years Santo got edged out for the gold glove was when Boyer moved over to the Atlanta Braves. Still, I'm not claiming he was better than either Robinson or Boyer. I'm saying he was in the same league and his offensive production more than made up for any comparatively small deficiencies in the glove work. Honus Wagner was a great shortstop, too. But he might not have been quite as good with the glove as Ozzie Smith.
Ditto for Schmidt versus Santo. Schmidt was the better offensive player, but not by a long shot. Extra base hits certainly count for more than hitting on base and Schmidt had the clear edge here. Santo was roughly equal with the glove. One needs to look at the competition in the league rather than just counting gold gloves. Schmidt was in a class all by himself. Santo had lots of competition.
Your summary sentence says it best: he was the best of the 1960s which was one of the best eras for baseball.
As for the off-field activities, they can, should and do affect Hall of Fame worthiness. It is the only reason that Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson haven't made it.
Our conclusion is the same: Ron Santo is long overdue for the Hall of Fame and it is an indelible stain on that institution that they failed to recognize him while he was still alive.
A ‘late season’ collapse okay but a ‘stretch run’ collapse’?...not in my view. A 30-27 stretch run does not constitute a team’s ‘collapse’ in my old
timer MLB following eyes only UNLESS that team held a substantial, (by playing great to phenomenal winning percentage ball themselves), lead and was overtaken by another team that put up a HUGE Aug./Sept. push. Then, an under .500 or just over .500 percentage playing team would be considered a collapse in my view. (think Aug./Sept. drop offs by the ‘51 Brooks, ‘69 Cubs or the ‘95 Halos, after their 4 months of good to great play, to mention just 3 such instances.) I will agree with you that yes, the Cubbies had a ‘late season’ letdown but I never felt in ‘71 or now that they collapsed in the ‘stretch run’. (Hell, the Cubs were not ever gonna keep with the Bucks over 162 games in ‘71 anyway, and the Cubs finished up just where they belonged in the standings. The Pirates were to good that season winning the East and then the NLCS and a great 4-3 WS win over the Birds). Semantics? well, maybe but that is one of the funnest parts of hot stove things between fans. Pitchers and catchers report 2/13/2011! That will not come fast enough for myself!
Pitchers and catchers report 2/13/2011! That will not come fast enough for myself!Take a number, buster! ;)
I always though Clete got shortchanged because Robinson played on more World Series bound teams.Clete Boyer played on five World Series teams (all consecutive: 1960-64); Brooks Robinson played on four World Series teams (three consecutive: 1969-71) during Boyer's major league career. (For the record: Boyer and Robinson have two World Series rings each.) I wouldn't exactly call that shortchanging. The reason Clete Boyer gets left out of the conversation, I repeat, is that he couldn't hit with a garage door.
If you want to talk about Clete Boyer being shortchanged, consider that the only Gold Glove he ever won in his career was in 1969, his third season with the Braves . . . in a season in which Ron Santo was his equal as a defender. The Braves winning the National League West, as opposed to the Cubs missing the National League East, may have cost Santo that Gold Glove, too. (Some Glove voters, perhaps enough, think division titles are about equal to gaudy batting stats for determining Gold Glove awards, and for recent examples Joe Mauer won a Gold Glove he earned with his bat, too.) But there were a small truckload of his Yankee seasons in which Boyer was the better fielding third baseman but Robinson was winning the Gold Gloves (not unworthily; he earned his legend as The Hoover at third, the legend that caused Sparky Anderson to quake, "I'm beginning to see Brooks in my sleep---if I drop this paper plate, he'll pick it up on one hop and throw me out at first") and it probably had to do with the fact that Robinson could hit a good bit and Boyer couldn't hit, period.
Honus Wagner was a great shortstop, too. But he might not have been quite as good with the glove as Ozzie Smith.Reality check: Who was? Though I'd love to see what Honus Wagner's fielding stats would have been if he'd had the kind of equipment that even Ron Santo or Bill Mazeroski had to work with, never mind The Wiz. Wagner was a better fielder than people credited him with being; I'm convinced it would be more evident if he'd played in Santo's and Mazeroski's time and had better or at least deeper gloves with which to play the position. He might have put up stats that make his fielding ability far more evident to the naked eye.
Which reminds me that I've been hoping the Hall of Fame elections of Ozzie Smith and Bill Mazeroski might have bumped the case for Marty Marion a trifle or three. Marion was no questions asked the best defencive shortstop of the 1940s (hell, he may have been the best defencive player of that era, period) and I'm amazed that there hasn't been a swell of support for him.
Santo was roughly equal [to Schmidt] with the glove. One needs to look at the competition in the league rather than just counting gold gloves. Schmidt was in a class all by himself. Santo had lots of competition.Mike Schmidt had a little more competition at third base in his time than you might think. Those who didn't mention Graig Nettles to you just didn't see him play, especially in several World Series. George Brett is so easy to remember as a great hitter that it's just as easy to forget he was a terrific defencive third baseman. He wasn't quite Mike Schmidt's equal at the plate or in the field but he was the next best thing and in more ways than one: Schmidt wrings out as the no-questions-asked greatest third baseman ever to play the game and Brett, his absolute contemporary (though Brett was finished as a regular third baseman a couple of years before Schmidt; Brett moved to first base and then DH for the final few years of his career), was the no-questions-asked number two man at the position. It isn't even close. According to Bill James's analysis, here are the top ten, from ten to one:
10. Darrell Evans. (Another contemporary of Schmidt and Brett; his lifetime batting average being below .250, it's difficult to see him for what he was, but he was a borderline great third baseman and one of the best in the business in the field.)Every one of these men except for Darrell Evans, Stan Hack, and Ron Santo is in the Hall of Fame. Evans won't get there, Hack shouldn't (he was a terrific leadoff man and a good fielder, but he had pretty limited fielding range even though he had a good fielding average, which tells you what he did with what he could reach but not how much he could reach), and it's a crime that Santo isn't.
9. Stan Hack. (He gets underrated because he was something a lot of managers wouldn't even think about today for a third baseman: a leadoff hitter.)
8. Paul Molitor. (Hands up to everyone who only remembers his being a DH while forgetting he was an above-average third baseman.)
7. Brooks Robinson.
6. Ron Santo.
5. Home Run Baker.
4. Wade Boggs. (His hitting stats overwhelm any discussion of him, but he was a good fielding third baseman.)
3. Eddie Mathews. (He got there with his bat; he was a very average defencive player at best.)
2. George Brett.
1. Mike Schmidt.
As for the off-field activities, they can, should and do affect Hall of Fame worthiness. It is the only reason that Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson haven't made it.Actually, Pete Rose got himself banned from baseball because of things he did off the field (technically) that might have impacted what he'd do on the field. Remember---he finally admitted betting on baseball and betting on his own team. Pete Rose isn't kept out of the Hall of Fame because he's a naughty boy; he's kept out of the Hall of Fame because he broke one of baseball's rules. Shoeless Joe Jackson isn't kept out of the Hall of Fame because he made a grave mistake; he's kept out of the Hall of Fame because, to whatever extent (I'll get to that in a minute), he was part of an active conspiracy to throw a World Series.
The Black Sox's one notorious off-field activity can't be called an off-the-field activity because it had something very directly to do with what they would or wouldn't do in an official major league contest. They may have made the deals and done the money changing in the team hotel, but it tied explicitly to what they were or weren't about to do in a World Series. This wasn't just a bunch of guys playing the horses with the bookies; this was a bunch of guys arranging for payoffs in return for throwing the World Series to a team who's been unfairly dismissed as a lesser team. (And I'll get to that in a minute.)
I'm not unsympathetic to Shoeless Joe Jackson. Everything I've read of the 1919 World Series fix tells me he wasn't even close to being one of the fix's major movers or shakers. (I'm convinced the whole thing began with infielders Chick Gandil and Swede Risberg and that they were the masterminds and enforcers of the White Sox's side of the fix.) He may have been more dumb than dishonest. (Most of the fixers, Gandil and Risberg aside, may have been more dumb than dishonest.)
He made one big mistake---he took the money. Whether for an extremely short time, whether overnight, whether whatever. He took the money. Period dot period. What helps make it a black enough hole is that his World Series performance itself isn't as cut and dried as it seems on paper. Yes, he hit .375 in the Series to lead all hitters . . . but his average in the games the White Sox lost was .286. He drove in six runs . . . but three came in games the White Sox lost. And he did confess his role, whatever it was, in the fix. (As did pitcher Eddie Cicotte, the only other member of the Black Sox who might have been elected to the Hall of Fame but for the 1919 fix. Three of the 1919 Clean Sox---Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk, and Red Faber---were elected to Cooperstown in due course, though there are those who wonder just how on earth Faber got in . . .)
To me, the real crime of the 1919 World Series fix is that it put an unwarranted stain on the 1919 Cincinnati Reds. There's not a shred of evidence to suggest that those Reds couldn't have played up with and even beaten the 1919 White Sox if the World Series had been played straight. The 1919 White Sox were a better hitting club by a comfortable enough margin . . . but the 1919 Reds actually had better pitching (the Reds' team ERA: 2.23; the White Sox': 3.04), and better defence---by a considerable enough margin. I'm convinced that if it had been played completely clean, the 1919 World Series would not have been the given for the White Sox that the mythology often had it, and that it probably would have done to a full nine games or close enough thereto, with the Reds having at least as great a chance to win it as the White Sox.
Our conclusion is the same: Ron Santo is long overdue for the Hall of Fame and it is an indelible stain on that institution that they failed to recognize him while he was still alive.Actually, it's an indelible stain on the voters who didn't elect him. Just like the election of His Excellency Al-Hashish Field Marshmallow Dr. Barack Obama Dada, COD, RIP, LSMFT, Would-Be Life President of the Republic Formerly Known as the United States, and Chairman of the Organisation of Halfrican Unity, is an indelible stain not on the institutions of the United States (if you don't count a Republican Party that---a few kinks aside---couldn't come up with anything better than John McCain to challenge him) but on the voters who were damn fool enough to elect him in the first place.
I've long advocated that the Hall of Fame voting should not be limited to the Baseball Writers Association of America. I don't believe they should lose the vote but why should it be only them? Why shouldn't more of the men and women who watch the game just as closely have a Hall of Fame vote? Why shouldn't the magazine writers (Roger Angell, for example) have a Hall of Fame vote. Why shouldn't George F. Will have a vote? Why shouldn't the historians such as Charles Alexander have had a vote? Why shouldn't the broadcasters (a former player who's in the broadcast booth and on the Hall of Fame ballot could be recused) have a vote? The umpires? (Once upon a time, the question could also have included, why shouldn't the living Hall of Famers themselves, but it took a long, long time to shake off the stain of the Frankie Frisch-Bill Terry years of the Veterans Committee, when they seemed bent most on getting as many of their New York Giants and St. Louis Cardinals buddies into Cooperstown as they could get away with.)
Until Santo died, I was pretty convinced that the next Veterans Committee---if not this time, then perhaps next time---would have voted to enshrine him. They've done a good job of tightening up the Veterans Committee to the point where I don't see anything happening ever again that gets anywhere near the damage the Committee wreaked in the Frisch-Terry era. I think Santo would have gone in in this decade. I still think he will.
But it would have been a wonderful thing if he could have lived long enough to accept the honour.
I had forgotten about Clete Boyer being on those great Yankee teams in the early 1960's. When I started to follow baseball big, the Yankee franchise was already falling apart.
As you said, it is easy to see why Boyer didn't get much attention when he was with the Yankees given his poor performance with the bat. Playing alongside guys like Mantle, Maris, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford will do that.
Old Honus is still a legend here in Pittsburgh, although there is nobody alive who was old enough to have seen him play. I've seen the gloves those guys played with and have seen oven mittens with more sophistication and design to catch. The earliest motion pictures I've seen of baseball date from the 1920's, when the gloves had made small improvements and you nearly always see the players using both hands to catch. I don't know if it was even physically possible to make one-handed catches with even anything nearing the ease that players do it today.
I remember Clete Boyer playing for the Braves in late 60’s and early 70’s. As a kid 1969 was the first year I remember following baseball and Boyer played for the NL West winning Braves team that had Aaron, Rico Carty and Orlando Cepeda.
That day ALWAYS reminds me of being 5 or 6 years old again and the folks waking me up on Christmas morning! Darn it is FINALY here! Baseball is back!......Except that pitchers and catchers report ‘Christmas morning’ day last over 6 months! I bet you might have the same feelings.
Visitation is Thursday at 4pm. Holy Name Cathedral.
Funeral Friday morning.
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