When I was ten years old, I was a baseball FANATIC. I played ball every minute I could from the time I was eight. If there wasn't anyone to play with, I threw the ball up and hit it, or I threw it onto the roof of our house to practice catching it.
When I was eight, I wanted more than anything to be a baseball player. When I was eight and a half, I found out that I had the wrong genitalia to be a baseball player (okay, I didn't even know what genitalia were, but I knew I couldn't be a major league baseball player because I was a girl.) Perspective alert: if I had been a boy, it would probably have taken another year or so before I figured out I wasn't going to be Mickey Mantle.
The spring of my tenth year, 1969, my family moved to Chicago. And the most amazing collection of wonderful baseball players were playing in Chicago that season.
Well into August of that year, my Cubbies were the class of the National League. I had moved from a place I loved -- with a softball team for my 4th grade class -- to a Chicago suburb that knew girls should root for boys. No softball for me.
But there was a saving grace. I could watch the Cubs play ball every day. And sometimes, we would go into the city and actually watch them play.
I loved the Cubs that year. I cut out every article from the paper and made a scrapbook of that magical year. And I hero-worshipped a bunch of players on that team. But I was a third baseman. And my sister was a type 1 diabetic. And Ron Santo was our absolute hero.
My sister died 12 years ago at age 40. Complications from kidney/pancreas transplant. She had lost a leg, much of her vision, and all her kidney function. But she never gave up.
Ron Santo was an amazing ballplayer and an even more amazing human being. After spending much of his baseball career keeping his diabetes a secret, he spent much of his post career as an advocate. He was an incredibly beloved Chicago personality. And a great baseball player.
Santo endorsed the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's annual Ron Santo Walk to Cure Diabetes in Chicago from 1974 until his death, and raised over $60 million for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). In 2002, Santo was named the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's "Person of the Year".[30] Santo also inspired Bill Holden to walk 2,100 miles from Arizona to Chicago, to raise $250,000 for diabetes research.
Ron Santo was a great ballplayer. He has been almost voted into the Hall of Fame several times. He might make it yet. It breaks my heart that it will be posthumous.
ESPN's Jayson Stark on Ron Santo and the Hall of Fame:
Only about 500 people in the world get to vote in the baseball Hall of Fame election. I'm one of them. So I'm always aware, when I hold that ballot in my hand, that this is about more than a list of names. This is about lives and legacies. Those lives, those legacies, are changed forever by the results of those elections.
So from the day that ballot arrives in the mail to the day I fill it out, those names, those lives, those legacies grab a little chunk of my brain and hold on so tight, you'd think they were stamped on a winning Powerball ticket. They pinball around up there for WEEKS -- until I'm finished the momentous debate that revolves around every one of them: Yes or no? Hall of Famer or not?
I've learned, in a decade and a half as a voter, not to answer that question too quickly. And I know exactly who taught me that lesson.
Ron Santo.
Here's the link to Jayson's article about Ron Santo and his Hall of Fame credentials.
Jayson Stark on Ron Santo
RIP Ronnie. Chicago will miss you. And I will picture you clicking your heels into the great unknown.
And I'll always always always hate the Mets for 1969. Their miracle; Chicago's heartbreak.
And a little Steve Goodman, because, well, because it seems right.