BP Unfiltered

I'm not old enough to remember Santo the player but I loved listening to him on the radio. He was a fan sitting in the announcer's booth who wore his heart on his sleeve. I'll never forget his call in '98 when the Cubs were trying to clinch a playoff spot and Brant Brown dropped a flay ball to cost the Cubs the game. Listening to games just won't be the same without Ron.

I'm not a Cubs fan. But I was a Ron Santo fan. Every organization wishes they had guys like him, whose service to and love for the organization added to the team's reputation for die-hard fans.

I liked to listen to Ron on the radio. While I don't particularly like "homers", I never minded Ron as much as others I have heard [cough,cough, Hawk] It's true that he wore his heart on his sleeve as a fan, but it's also true that he called it way he saw it - he was never afraid to criticize when he thought that something or someone deserved it.

His fundraising work with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation was simply outstanding. If Ron Santo had never done another thing in his life, that work alone would be remarkable.

They just don't make 'em like Ron Santo anymore. What a shame.

I am barely old enough to remember Ron Santo as a player--mostly I remember Jack Brickhouse announcing the lineups and WGN showing Santo, Kessinger, Beckert and Joe Pepitone as they went around the horn. But I do remember liking him because, in my six year old mind at least, he was always smiling and looking like he was having a good time, as opposed his more sober teammates.

As an announcer, Santo was one of us. Most announcers are fans of the team that pays their salary. Santo was just there in the booth because they asked him to and he would have been at the game or watching at home anyway. He was a great Cub player, but he wasn't the greatest Cub player of all time. Wasn't even the greatest player on his team as long as Billy Williams was around. However, he was probably the greatest Cub fan of all time. And for that, Cub fans loved him.

Well said, Colin. I’m just old enough to remember Santo the player, though only near the end of his career – probably 1972 is the first season I can recall as more than just a short collection of fleeting images – yet it really is as a fan and broadcaster that I’ll remember him most. To be honest, there are people who would hear him on the radio and cringe. And there are likely some today who are a little amazed at the depth of emotion that so many have felt at his passing – and I have to admit, I’m personally a little amazed at my own depth of emotion about it. Some of it has to do, of course, with the story of his ever-present optimism in the face of diabetes, the loss of his legs, and his inexplicable exclusion from the Hall of Fame. Some of it has to do with his likeability, a fact that made fans overlook his shortcomings as a broadcaster because, as so many have said, he was one of us. Criticizing his game-calling skills would have been akin to criticizing the guy on your local small-town radio station calling a high school football game – he’s your neighbor, after all, and he never claimed to be a professional, so what’s the point?

Mostly, though, I’ll personally miss him because he gave vent to the same frustrations that I felt, and as he grew older he became ever the more an emotional surrogate for my own father, and my grandfather, and the generations of Cubs fans that have never been able to celebrate a championship. His passing makes us sad for him, and for his family and friends, but also for our own relatives and friends who have struggled through the same enduring frustrations (though on a lesser scale), and have left this world with their hopes similarly unfulfilled. I think that, in many ways, is what saddens so many Cubs fans today – the fact that they won’t be able to hear Ronnie call a World Series victory, and explain to the world exactly what we’re feeling. I’m not sure whether anyone else can.

As a Cardinals fan, and at that, one plenty old enough to remember Santo the player as well as Santo the announcer (I threw batting practice to a high-school/college friend everyone knew as "Santo" because of his passion for the guy), my perspective is quite different from that of most others in this thread, yet my feelings are very much the same. I had a mild resentment for Santo the player, because he became excellent at just the time when the Cardinals had cast adrift their own excellent third baseman (Ken Boyer), and had nothing Santo-ish to replace him with. This matured into grudging respect for a guy who was really very good, and later, into recognition that he'd been greatly undervalued in his own time. I'm not sure to this day that he fully deserved election to the HoF, but he sure wouldn't have been the worst player there, and if I was on the Veterans Committee, I'd probably vote for him.

As for Santo the announcer, "homers" generally sit poorly with me (including Cardinals homers ... no, really, I'm serious...), but one of the things about Ron was that he made absolutely no bones about the fact that he _was_ a homer, and one can respect that. Furthermore, he communicated his love for his own team without any hatred for the others. That, for me, captures much that is right and good and beautiful and worthy about baseball.

We'll miss you greatly, Ron, and I say that from the other side of the best "friendly enemies" rivalry in the game ... but don't hold your heavenly breath waiting for the Cubs to beat the Cardinals to the next World Series win. :-)

I'll never forget the first time I heard Santo on the radio when I moved to Chicago. I think they were playing the Cardinals, but it doesn't matter. Santo went on for 15 minutes about when he was a player on a road trip, this same pigeon followed them from Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. Somehow this pigeon was the reason for his slump. Meanwhile, Pat keeps calling the game and commenting enough to keep Santo going.
It had no relation to the game and of course there was no way that there was really one pigeon that followed them on this road trip. It was the most confusing 15 minutes of a baseball game I've ever heard. The next day I switched to WGN and Santo still mentioned the pigeon.
If he wasn't such a genuinely nice person, I would have hated everything about his story as some insincere story to waste time. But it was just Santo being Santo.