Reprinted with permission of the Chicago Tribune

Santo Not Alone in Taking Snub by Hall Hard
Mike Downey

February 27, 2003

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- "Our boy didn't make it," Jim Dantona said.

I phoned Jim, the world's biggest Ron Santo fan, at his office in Simi Valley, Calif., a short while after leaving the disconsolate ex-Cub's home here Wednesday morning.

Dantona already knew the news. The mighty Santo had struck out.

"I don't care what the veterans committee says," was Dantona's indignant reaction. "I don't care what the sportswriters say. I don't care what anybody says. Ron Santo is a Hall of Famer."

A great many of us agree.

Unfortunately, not enough.

You would think having both legs amputated would be ample bad news in an old ballplayer's life. But not for Santo, who took this less gruesome setback equally hard.

The call came at 10:30 a.m. Very sorry, but Santo had not received the votes required to be in baseball's Valhalla.

Ray Scarpelli, his closest friend, tried to console a guy whose diabetes is a far more serious hardship. He said, "You could have just been told you have two months to live."

Santo's sorrow ran deep, though.

His response was, "Ray, that's how I felt when I got the call."

It isn't very healthy, Santo's attitude, but at least it's honest.

In his homestead, amid a Southwestern motif and Indian artifacts, Santo seemed very much concerned that this could be his last stand. Legs gone, a Cubs insignia on his prosthetics, he was in a way reminiscent of Gus McCrae of "Lonesome Dove," felled by an arrow, resigned to his fate.

"I'm more hurt than disappointed," Santo said, a statement typically made in reverse.

Taking my own stab at consolation, I said, "Nellie Fox didn't make the Hall for a long time either."

"But didn't Nellie Fox get in posthumously?" Santo asked.

"Yes."

"I don't want to do that."

Diabetes definitely can be deadly. It afflicted Ty Cobb, an original Hall of Famer, just as it did Jackie Robinson, another pioneer, leaving Robinson near-blind by the end.

Each at least lived long enough to be cheered by his peers, immortalized among the best of the best.

Sometimes it has to be easier to perk up others than it is oneself. Jim Dantona, for example, recalls when his 14-year-old son Bobby first was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, how fearful they were. Dantona put in a call to Santo from a hospital hallway. Santo gave him the standard pep talk, said don't worry, your boy will be OK.

"An hour later," Dantona recalled, "Ronnie calls the room and has a long conversation with my son. It was like in the movies, where Babe Ruth visits that kid in the hospital and promises to hit a home run. My boy was scared. Ron Santo made him believe everything would be all right."

Dantona, 54, is the founder of Baseballers Against Drugs, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving and saving children.

He launched it in 1989, long after his first encounter with Santo. Twenty years earlier, Dantona had been playing second base for Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Calif., eager to make the bigs. A native Chicagoan, he wrote a letter to his favorite Cub player seeking advice, care of the team.

Not only did Santo phone, he asked Leo Durocher for permission to invite Dantona to spring camp. The Cubs gave the kid an audition for a week.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

"In our household, Ron Santo is a Hall of Fame name, and it always has been," Dantona said. "We have our own shrine to him."

Jim's younger brother John is an executive with Baseballers Against Drugs. As a boy, making his confirmation in church, he adopted the name John Santo Dantona.

As for Dantona's diabetic son, he is now 28, still insulin-dependent but otherwise doing fine.

Bobby, his brother Jimmy and sister Jenny all own their own Chicago Cubs No. 10 throwback jerseys, autographed, of course. No Babes or Cobbs or Robinsons for them.

Their hero, Ron Santo, is a little down in the dumps today. A little sad.

He shouldn't be. After all, he's Ron Santo.

Copyright ©2003, The Chicago Tribune