Cubs Broadcaster Ron Santo Thinks Former Cub Ron Santo Should Be In The Hall of Fame

The World Wide Leader in Sports reported today that former Cub Ron Santo is somewhat unhappy the Veterans Committee failed to elect him as a part of the 2009 Hall of Fame class. Santo perhaps is best known today for being the voice of disgruntled groans and irrational swings of emotions on WGN’s play-by-play coverage of Chicago Cubs baseball games. Before I sink my teeth into some of these delicious quotes from Ronnie, I will let my personal bias out of the bag in the case of Ron Santo v. The National Baseball Hall of Fame. Santo probably deserves to be in via the Veterans Committee, good career numbers in a tough era for hitters, multiple Gold Glove awards and All Star game appearances that voters love, and he’s become one of those “living legend” type figures (deserved or not) for the Cubs. Does he have the true numbers of a legit Hall of Fame baseball player? No, he doesn’t, but the Veterans Committee is a whole different meatball. Chew on this hypothetical teaching moment:

Note:
The following scene is taken from the screenplay and upcoming feature film entitled Captain Fantastic; Earth Saver.
Courtesy of Captain Fantastic.
Copyright pending.

[In this scene Captain Fantastic and Boy #1 are sitting at a local ice cream parlor sharing a strawberry malt. Captain Fantastic is trying to explain to Boy #1 the caliber of player selected by the Veterans Committee to become members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.]

Captain Fantastic: Close your eyes son. Now, imagine you’re watching the 2050 Academy Awards and you see Vince Vaughn or Charlie Sheen accepting an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar for acting.

Boy #1: [shocked] But, those guys are mediocre actors who would never get an Oscar for their acting abilities today, let alone even be seriously considered right?!

Captain Fantastic: [enthusiastically] Exactly! And this make-believe situation involving Vince Vaughn or Charlie Sheen receiving an honorary Academy Award is somewhat analogous to the caliber of baseball players the Veterans Committee selects to be members of the Hall of Fame.

Boy #1: [excited] I think I get it now! So what you’re trying to say is that in his time not many people considered Ron Santo to be a Hall of Famer, only a solid player who had a good career, but now that time has passed and Santo has remained relevant and become a fixture of baseball, very much like Vince or Charlie could do in the film industry, people think he should be in the Hall of Fame. Sort of like a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for baseball!

Captain Fantastic: Bingo!

Boy #1: Captain Fantastic, do you think robots will act in movies in the future?

Captain Fantastic: The future!? Did you see the last Keanu Reeves movie?

Boy #1: [laughs] Gee Captain Fantastic, you sure are great at teaching [pauses] and saving the Earth from destruction.

Captain Fantastic: [smiling] I only hope I am as good at saving the Earth from destruction as this ice cream parlor is at making strawberry malts!

Captain Fantastic and Boy #1 together: [thunderously laughing]

Scene.

I hope that cleared things up for everyone. Now to the good stuff courtesy of ESPN.com:

''It's a travesty,'' Santo said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. ''When I saw nobody got in again, I go, 'Whoa, this is wrong.' They can't keep going the way they're going. They've got to put a [different] committee out there.''

"It'll be eight years now that they've voted and not let anybody in. And personally, I feel like there's a lot of guys that should've been in, not just me," Santo said, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Fair enough. Maybe they could make some changes to the process by which players are selected by the Veterans Committee. Calling it a travesty is probably overkill though. Genocide in Africa is a travesty. Brain cancer is a travesty. No one being elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee. Not quite on the same level.

However, Hall of Fame chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark noted that the goal of the two-stage veterans' process is not to elect someone every time they vote, according to the Sun-Times.

''The process was not redesigned with the goal of necessarily electing someone, but to give everyone on the ballot a very fair chance of earning election through a ballot of their peers,'' Clark said, according to the report.

No argument here. Makes all the sense in the world. The Veterans Committee is in place to elect a player that may have been looked over by the Hall of Fame voters (BBWAA) while they were eligible for election after their retirement or when the Hall of Fame opened. A player does not have to be elected every year, in fact that would dilute the honor of being elected to the Hall of Fame. If someone is deserving they should get voted in and who better to do the voting than a committee of their peers?

"They have to change it," Santo said, according to the Tribune. "They're going to still have a Veterans Committee, but it should go back to where it was [in the '90s] when Bill Mazeroski got in. I think they should have a committee of maybe 12 guys that vote, that's the way to do it."

OK. Now I’m starting to lose you Ronnie. I am not quite sure where the Maz reference helps you here. Does Ron think Maz is a good comparison to himself? Bill James has said that Maz probably had the most impressive defensive stats of any player at any position. Now that is something which could have been overlooked by election committees in the past especially with the advent of more precise fielding statistics that didn’t even exist in Maz’s day. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve never heard Santo be referenced as possibly the greatest defensive player of all time. And Santo’s batting totals are much more impressive than Maz’s, maybe he should focus on that for his platform.

"Evaluate everyone, but instead of having all the [Hall of Fame] players vote, maybe just a couple players, a couple broadcasters, a couple writers -- a much smaller group. That's how [Joe] Gordon got in."

Why would they do that Ron? Joe Gordan got voted in by only 12 guys because he was elected by the committee of 12 people that selects players from the pre-WWII era. You played after WWII so you are subject to the vote of the living members of the Hall of Fame. Those are the rules. Not perfect maybe, I’ll give you that, but those are the rules. If you truly thought you were worthy of being elected by the Veterans Committee wouldn’t you rather have all your peers, the ones who you played with and against, have a say in the process? I guess Ron thinks he’d have more pull with only a couple players and his peers in the media sitting around in a room chewing Red Man exchanging stories about Santo beating up hippies back in the 60’s to let off steam after games. Ron Santo is probably right, that sort of system would probably work out better for Ron Santo, but I’m not sure if everyone else would be too happy about a smaller committee electing their old drinking buddies to the Hall of Fame. Well at least Ron didn’t sink to the level of bringing up his diabetes as a reason he should be a Hall of Famer. Oh? He did……

''Getting in or not getting in is not going to change my life at all. I'm going to be me, and that's it," Santo said, according to the Sun-Times. "But I feel I deserve this. I put up Hall of Fame numbers during the greatest era of baseball for pitchers, and I played with diabetes. Only diabetics can know what I went through. It would have just been satisfying [to be elected].''

I think that settles it. From hence forth the Hall of Fame will have a Committee of Diabetics to determine if former diabetic players are worthy of election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. So far committee members include: Wilford Brimley, the horse from Half Baked, Jay Cutler, Mike Huckabee, Adam Morrison, Mick Fleetwood, and Ron Santo.

Oh, and one last thing Ron. Maybe next time before you try to pull out the ‘diabetic card’, keep in mind that Ty Cobb and Catfish Hunter were both diabetics and were both elected by the BBWAA to the Hall of Fame.

Better luck next year Ron.