Legendary Chicago Cubs player and broadcaster Ron Santo died Thursday night in Arizona. He was 70.
Friends of Santo's family said the North Side icon lapsed into a coma on Wednesday before dying Thursday. Santo died of complications from bladder cancer, WGN-AM 720 reported.
Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts released a statement: "My siblings and I first knew Ron Santo as fans, listening to him in the broadcast booth. We knew him for his passion, his loyalty, his great personal courage and his tremendous sense of humor. It was our great honor to get to know him personally in our first year as owners.
"Ronnie will forever be the heart and soul of Cubs fans."
The former Cubs third baseman had continued to work as a Cubs analyst on WGN, the team's flagship radio broadcast, despite his health issues. He was expected to return for the 2011 season. He missed several road trips in 2010 but insisted he would return.
Former Cubs President John McDonough compared Santo to Harry Caray, another baseball broadcasting legend, noting neither had a filter, broadcast with unvarnished emotion and were enormously entertaining.
Santo mangled names, sometimes lost track of what was going on in a game and occasionally didn't realize some player had been on the roster for months, but none of that mattered because people loved it, McDonough said. "We almost thought he was doing it on purpose," he said. "It added so much entertainment value."
You had to like Santo because he was a Cubs fan and made no apologies for his on-air cheerleading or his utter frustration over a Cub's misplay.
Santo never witnessed his longtime goal of election to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite career numbers that mark him as one of baseball's all-time great third basemen. He finished with a .277 average over 15 major league seasons, with 342 home runs and 1,331 runs batted in.
Though Santo came close to Cooperstown enshrinement in the last decade in voting by the Veterans Committee, he always fell short. In 2007, Santo received 39 of the 48 votes necessary to reach the 75 percent threshold of the living 64 Hall of Famers to cast a ballot. His 61 percent lead all candidates and no one was elected to the Hall.
It was the fourth straight time the Veterans Committee had failed to elect a member, leaving Santo frustrated.
Santo was up for the Hall of Fame on 19 occasions, and first appeared on the Veterans Committee ballot in 2003. He got his hopes up on every occasion.
"Everybody felt this was my year," he said after the last vote in December 2008. "I felt it. I thought it was gonna happen, and when it didn't. ... What really upset me was nobody got in.
Santo began his major league career with the Cubs in 1960, and spent one season with the White Sox in 1974. He earned National League Gold Glove awards five straight seasons from 1964 to 1968 and was a nine-time NL All-Star. He was one of the leaders of the 1969 team that blew the division lead to the New York Mets, a season indelibly etched in Cubs' history.
Though Santo never made the Hall of Fame, his number was retired by the Cubs. He said that was equivalent to being inducted in Cooperstown. Being a Cub, and playing at Wrigley Field, meant the world to Santo.
In recent years, Santos had a couple wild mishaps while announcing, his toupee caught fire in the Shea Stadium press box in New York on Opening Day 2003 after he got too close to an overhead space heater. And last spring in Mesa, Ariz., Santo lost his front tooth while biting into a piece of pizza. He gave his body and soul to the Cubs while playing and while broadcasting.
Here are Santos' lifetime stats. You tell me if he is Hall worthy. The 343 home runs are like hitting almost 500 today, the hits and RBIs are huge, and his contribution to baseball speaks volumes.
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