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By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Ron Santo, a star third baseman of the Chicago Cubs and their longtime broadcaster who became a revered figure for his exploits on the field and his battle against juvenile diabetes, died Thursday in a hospital in Arizona. He was 70.
The cause was com
plications of bladder cancer, said WGN Radio, where Santo was a Cubs color commentator.
Playing for the Chicago Cubs from 1960 to 1973, then for a final season with the Chicago White Sox, Santo hit 342 career home runs, won five Gold Glove awards for fielding and was named an All-Star nine times.
He was a key figure on the 1969 Cubs team that was leading the Mets by 13 games in August before collapsing. That team gained a particularly agonizing niche in the star-crossed history of the Cubs, who have not won a pennant since 1945. But Santo endeared himself to the Bleacher Bums in their hard hats at Wrigley Field that summer by clicking his heels with joy after victories.
That Santo was on a major league field, let alone starring alongside the future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins, seemed remarkable.
When he took a routine physical in 1959, on the brink of making his Cubs debut, Santo was found to have juvenile diabetes. He began taking insulin within two years, but kept his diabetes a secret from the Cubs until being named to his first All-Star team in 1963, fearing that management’s knowledge of his illness might have damaged his career. He did not allow the public to know of his diabetes until his final years with the Cubs.
After his playing days ended, Santo raised millions of dollars for diabetes research, and for more than two decades he sponsored an annual walk-a-thon to help seek a cure. The disease took a heavy toll on him. He had heart attacks, went through quadruple-bypass surgery, then underwent amputation of his legs, in 2001 and 2002, but continued as a Cubs color commentator with WGN, using prostheses. He also underwent surgery for the bladder cancer.
“I was diagnosed with diabetes at age 18,” Santo told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1990. “I didn’t know what it was, so I went to the library and looked it up. I can still remember the feeling I had when I read the description: Life expectancy of a juvenile insulin-dependent diabetic: 25 years. It also stated that it would cause blindness, kidney failure and hardening of the arteries. At that point, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to fight this thing and beat it.’ That’s how badly I wanted to live and be a big league ballplayer.”
Santo, a native of Seattle, was signed by the Cubs’ organization after high school, and when he first appeared at Wrigley Field, he was transfixed. “I used to watch the ‘Game of the Week’ from Seattle, and every time I saw Wrigley Field, I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Denver Post in 2004. “Then when I walked into Wrigley Field with Ernie Banks ... We came out of the clubhouse in left field, and I’m walking down on the grass and I’m looking out to the outfield, and the ivy hadn’t quite blossomed yet, but it was close. It was like walking on air. There was a feeling of electricity that I’ve never had.”
Santo became a regular in 1961, emerging as a smooth fielder and an outstanding right-handed batter with power. He was durable as well, playing in 390 consecutive games before he was hit in the cheekbone by a pitch from the Mets’ Jack Fisher in June 1966.
He had four seasons in which he hit .300 and hit at least 30 home runs every year from 1964 to 1967. He was a mainstay of a superb Cubs infield of the 1960s, with Banks having switched to first base from shortstop, Glenn Beckert at second base and Don Kessinger at short.
Still, it was not enough to hold off the Mets in 1969, and Santo had never made it to a World Series when he retired after 15 seasons with a career batting average of .277, 2,254 hits and 1,331 runs batted in. He gained serious consideration for the Hall of Fame in balloting by the Veterans Committee but fell short in the baseball writers’ recent annual votings.
For Santo, there was much adversity even beyond his medical travails. His father was an alcoholic who left the family when Santo and his sister were youngsters. His mother re-married, and then in 1973, when his mother and stepfather were driving from California to see him at spring training in Arizona, both were killed in an auto accident.
After various business ventures, Santo began working as a Cubs color commentator on WGN in the early 1990s, broadcasting alongside the legendary Harry Caray. As he battled the complications of diabetes as well as cancer, and continued his charitable work, his popularity grew. The Cubs retired his No. 10 at Wrigley Field in September 2003, and he stood and waved from the radio booth to the cheer of the crowd. The following year, his son Jeff made a film on his life, “This Old Cub,” which had its premiere at the Chicago Historical Society.
Information on his survivors was not immediately available.
When the Cubs announced they would retire Santo’s No. 10 and fly it from the left-field foul pole, Santo told The Associated Press: “There’s nothing more important to me in my life than this happening to me. I’m a Cubbie. I’ll always be a Cubbie.”
www.nytimes.com
Ron Santo, a star third baseman of the Chicago Cubs and their longtime broadcaster who became a revered figure for his exploits on the field and his battle against juvenile diabetes, died Thursday in a hospital in Arizona. He was 70.
The cause was com
plications of bladder cancer, said WGN Radio, where Santo was a Cubs color commentator.Playing for the Chicago Cubs from 1960 to 1973, then for a final season with the Chicago White Sox, Santo hit 342 career home runs, won five Gold Glove awards for fielding and was named an All-Star nine times.
He was a key figure on the 1969 Cubs team that was leading the Mets by 13 games in August before collapsing. That team gained a particularly agonizing niche in the star-crossed history of the Cubs, who have not won a pennant since 1945. But Santo endeared himself to the Bleacher Bums in their hard hats at Wrigley Field that summer by clicking his heels with joy after victories.
That Santo was on a major league field, let alone starring alongside the future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins, seemed remarkable.
When he took a routine physical in 1959, on the brink of making his Cubs debut, Santo was found to have juvenile diabetes. He began taking insulin within two years, but kept his diabetes a secret from the Cubs until being named to his first All-Star team in 1963, fearing that management’s knowledge of his illness might have damaged his career. He did not allow the public to know of his diabetes until his final years with the Cubs.
After his playing days ended, Santo raised millions of dollars for diabetes research, and for more than two decades he sponsored an annual walk-a-thon to help seek a cure. The disease took a heavy toll on him. He had heart attacks, went through quadruple-bypass surgery, then underwent amputation of his legs, in 2001 and 2002, but continued as a Cubs color commentator with WGN, using prostheses. He also underwent surgery for the bladder cancer.
“I was diagnosed with diabetes at age 18,” Santo told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1990. “I didn’t know what it was, so I went to the library and looked it up. I can still remember the feeling I had when I read the description: Life expectancy of a juvenile insulin-dependent diabetic: 25 years. It also stated that it would cause blindness, kidney failure and hardening of the arteries. At that point, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to fight this thing and beat it.’ That’s how badly I wanted to live and be a big league ballplayer.”
Santo, a native of Seattle, was signed by the Cubs’ organization after high school, and when he first appeared at Wrigley Field, he was transfixed. “I used to watch the ‘Game of the Week’ from Seattle, and every time I saw Wrigley Field, I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Denver Post in 2004. “Then when I walked into Wrigley Field with Ernie Banks ... We came out of the clubhouse in left field, and I’m walking down on the grass and I’m looking out to the outfield, and the ivy hadn’t quite blossomed yet, but it was close. It was like walking on air. There was a feeling of electricity that I’ve never had.”
Santo became a regular in 1961, emerging as a smooth fielder and an outstanding right-handed batter with power. He was durable as well, playing in 390 consecutive games before he was hit in the cheekbone by a pitch from the Mets’ Jack Fisher in June 1966.
He had four seasons in which he hit .300 and hit at least 30 home runs every year from 1964 to 1967. He was a mainstay of a superb Cubs infield of the 1960s, with Banks having switched to first base from shortstop, Glenn Beckert at second base and Don Kessinger at short.
Still, it was not enough to hold off the Mets in 1969, and Santo had never made it to a World Series when he retired after 15 seasons with a career batting average of .277, 2,254 hits and 1,331 runs batted in. He gained serious consideration for the Hall of Fame in balloting by the Veterans Committee but fell short in the baseball writers’ recent annual votings.
For Santo, there was much adversity even beyond his medical travails. His father was an alcoholic who left the family when Santo and his sister were youngsters. His mother re-married, and then in 1973, when his mother and stepfather were driving from California to see him at spring training in Arizona, both were killed in an auto accident.
After various business ventures, Santo began working as a Cubs color commentator on WGN in the early 1990s, broadcasting alongside the legendary Harry Caray. As he battled the complications of diabetes as well as cancer, and continued his charitable work, his popularity grew. The Cubs retired his No. 10 at Wrigley Field in September 2003, and he stood and waved from the radio booth to the cheer of the crowd. The following year, his son Jeff made a film on his life, “This Old Cub,” which had its premiere at the Chicago Historical Society.
Information on his survivors was not immediately available.
When the Cubs announced they would retire Santo’s No. 10 and fly it from the left-field foul pole, Santo told The Associated Press: “There’s nothing more important to me in my life than this happening to me. I’m a Cubbie. I’ll always be a Cubbie.”
www.nytimes.com
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