The Hall calls, but it calls too late

Ron Santo so desperately wanted to hear the news that came last week. That he died a year before it came is the cruelest of ironies to someone that deserved better.

Not that Santo deserved the nod for enshrinement into Cooperstown by the Veterans Committee; but rather that he spent the last 15 years of his life so desperately longing for something that was only accomplished in death.

I won't argue the merits of Santo's Hall of Fame credentials. His lifetime batting average was .277; he hit 342 home runs in 15 seasons. In those 15 seasons, he hit over .300 just three times, and hit more than 30 home runs just twice.

Baseball-Reference.com lists his offensive statistics as being most similar with Dale Murphy, Gary Gaetti, Ken Boyer, Ruben Sierra, and Chili Davis. While Santo's only contemporary of that group is Boyer, hardly anyone would argue that group is Hall of Fame caliber.

On the flip side, Santo was a five-time gold glove winner, taking home the trophy each year from 1964-1968. He was also a 9-time All-Star, who played hard and left every ounce of energy he had out on the field.

However, the bottom line is that as much as it pains me to say it, Ron Santo wasn't worthy of Cooperstown. Most players aren't. The fact that he is only the fifteenth third baseman elected is irrespective of his qualifications. Sadly, that it eventually took 19 ballots and his close friends to get it done speak to that.

Perhaps more importantly though, Ron Santo was a Hall of Fame human being, always having time to pose for a picture and sign an autograph with fans; always happy to sit down with a reporter from another city and talk Cubs baseball. Santo was beloved by generations of Cubs fans; first as a player of course, but then as a folksy, home-spun, unabashed homer on the radio, teamed up with consummate professional Pat Hughes.

You will not find anyone who encountered Ron Santo who disliked the man. Even as diabetes ravaged his body, costing him his legs in the early 2000's, Santo never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him, nor did ever use the disease as a reason for being grumpy. Conversely, as someone who never thought he would live past 50, Santo cherished every day as a joyful blessing.

That having been said, to elect him to the one place every major leaguer aspires to be when he is no longer here to smile and bask in the honor is almost the cruelest fate of all. For years Santo believed himself worthy of the Hall, completely unable to mask his disappointment every time he was passed over.

In 2003, Santo's No. 10 was retired by the Cubs, an honor previously reserved for those franchise players that had had been elected to Cooperstown. Realizing that based on the miniscule number of votes he had been receiving for enshrinement, the club did the honorable thing and bent the rules for the beloved figure. His exclamation that "This is MY Hall of Fame" showed that while he was grateful to Cubs fans, he feared they were the only ones that also saw him as worthy of the same enshrinement as Ruth, Gehrig, Aaron, Mays and the other greats of the game.

In 2005, during Ryne Sandberg's Hall of Fame induction speech, he said that Santo would get his vote on the Veterans Committee every time his name came up. In 2007, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a measure urging the rest of the Veterans Committee to do the same.

Clearly this was a noble effort on behalf of a special human being; a hero to those who also suffered from Diabetes and a father-figure to young players feeling their way through Major League Baseball. Santo was so beloved that by giving his name to an annual charity walk in 1974, he was able to raise $60 million for juvenile diabetes research before he died.

While I and others may debate the wisdom of Santo's enshrinement at all, to have it happen posthumously seems utterly pointless. Ron Santo the player did not deserve Cooperstown. Ron Santo the man did not deserve to have to die for it to happen.

Sadly, Santo is not the only Hall of Famer to only be honored in death. The same fate had befallen basketball's Dennis Johnson.

Johnson, like Santo, did things that didn't always show up in the box score. In his fourteen years, the man known as "DJ" was named to the NBA's all-defensive team nine times. Johnson was a five-time all-star and won three championship rings, winning NBA Finals MVP honors in 1979 while with Seattle.

When you consider that Johnson had teammates such as Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parrish around him, it is easy to see how he may have been overlooked.

Dennis Johnson died of a heart attack in 2007. In 2010 he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

One of the greatest injustices is the failure to elect Negro League player Buck O'Neill to the Hall. O'Neill was a good player; but for contributions to the game his omission to Cooperstown was glaring. O'Neill was one of the best talent scouts in the game, he was the first African-American Major League coach, and is credited with discovering and signing Lou Brock.

From 1981-2000 O'Neil was a member of the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee, despite not being a member of the Hall himself. His input was critical in the induction of Negro League players from 1995-2001 when only one such player or contributor was eligible for enshrinement per year.

Furthermore, if you were fortunate enough to have seen Ken Burns' seminal sports documentary "Baseball" you saw O'Neil recounting a period of the game's history that no one else had bothered to chronicle. Without Buck O'Neil, most of the great stories from that important period of baseball's past would have never been told.

In 2006, the good folks in Cooperstown finally seemed to realize the exclusive nature of their ways in virtually ignoring that period in the game's history. When O'Neil's name was placed on a special ballot for Negro League players, executives, managers, and contributors, it seemed to be a no-brainer that he would finally get his due. It may not have been as a player, but perhaps as a pioneer; perhaps as a contributor. But surely he would finally be able to call himself a Baseball Hall of Famer.

Shockingly, this was not the case. O'Neil, a tireless advocate for the game and its history fell three votes short of enshrinement while 17 other Negro Leaguers were inducted. Rather than tell the Hall to shove it, he simply said, "God's been good to me. They didn't think Buck was good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. That's the way they thought about it and that's the way it is, so we're going to live with that. Now, if I'm a Hall of Famer for you, that's all right with me. Just keep loving old Buck. Don't weep for Buck. No, man, be happy, be thankful."

In July, O'Neil was the voice that represented those 17 deceased friends that were similarly barred from playing in the Major Leagues in Cooperstown. He was grateful, eloquent, and inspiring in accepting enshrinement on their behalf.

One week later he was admitted to a local hospital complaining of fatigue. Two months later he died of heart failure and bone marrow cancer.

Later that year, President George W. Bush posthumously awarded O'Neil with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Major League Baseball then awarded him the first-ever Beacon of Life Award.

Yet Buck O'Neil still isn't in Cooperstown. Someday that glaring omission will be rectified, but for now, he sits in baseball purgatory; deceased, with fewer and fewer that were around to speak on his behalf for enshrinement.

But as was the case with Santo and Johnson, what would it mean today anyway? If Ron Santo was going to be elected to Cooperstown anyway, knowing how much it meant to him, couldn't he have been elected a few years ago? He knew his health was declining rapidly. That the Veterans Committee met every other year only filled him with more despair after each time he came up short. He even said that he was afraid that he wouldn't be around the next time the vote came up.

Turns out he was right.