"You always felt like it was baseball here"

 

My favorite people are people who love their jobs, people who we can all be pretty sure would still work even if they weren't getting a paycheck, people who make us question the definition of what work is and whether or not it has to involve at least some degree of disappointment or hassle or frustration.  People like the previously mentioned George the barber, people like Stuart, people like Ron Santo.

From 1959 until Thursday, Ron Santo managed to make a living from the game of baseball.  He played until 1974, and from 1990-2010 he was the color commentator for the Cubs.  The job description of "color commentator" could not fit anyone better than it fit Ron Santo.  We've discussed color commentators before.  Very few people who are given this title actually perform what they set out to.  They don't add color to the game, they add "I think I'm smarter than you" and "I don't give the viewers enough credit" insight.  Ron Santo didn't do that.  Ron Santo provided color.  He made listening fun.  As a Chicago native, it's very easy to juxtapose Ron and his play-by-play partner, Pat Hughes, with Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson of the White Sox.  Farmer and Jackson are very good at two things: 1. Trying to talk over each other.  2. Not really being able to figure out who's supposed to be doing play-by-play.  3. Knowing more than the other person  4. Taking themselves way too seriously  5. Not providing negative excitement (I know, that was more than 2, but I was on a roll).  Pat and Ron don't have these problems at all.  Pat gives an incredibly descriptive description of the game, the weather, the uniforms, the ballpark, and Ron sucks it all in like the rest of us would if we were at the ballpark.  He was an emotional roller coaster, just like the rest of us are when we're emotionally invested in things.  Would my mother like listening to the Cubs if it weren't for Ron Santo's ability to attach her emotionally to the game?  Not a chance.  He did this not only with positive excitement, but also with negative excitement, most famously when Brant Brown dropped that fricken fly ball.  "Ohhhh noooooo...  Nooooooooo!"  Pat and Ron had conversations that made listening worthwhile even when the game wasn't.  (Editor's note: This is a great stocking stuffer)  They involved the listener.  They were best friends and they allowed you into that circle, and we knew that it was a privilege and that we should be honored, and we were.  It was like they were sitting in the backseat of the car, reminiscing about the glory days, getting their hopes up about the current players and teams, and basically just being professional fans.

Ron Santo didn't add much insight to broadcasts.  He wasn't a brilliant analyst.  (Mickey Mantle once said, "I could never be a manager. All I have is natural ability."  I'd put Ron in a similar category)  He was, however, the most passionate of fans.  When we get to the ballpark we always check out who's sitting around us, and the best are the guys who know just enough to not be annoying ("Yay!  Wait, what happened?"), but not too much to the point where they over-analyze everything ("The SABRmetrics say that guys with Nike spikes perform worse on Thursdays.  I can't believe that Piniella didn't know that").  The best is the guy who has a relationship with the game, because baseball is a game you have to have a relationship with.  There isn't the constant excitement to hold your attention and it's way too complicated to truly understand unless you've spent a lot of time around it, which means that there is a much bigger distance between true fans and casual friends than in other sports.  I've heard people say that Ron Santo is annoying or that he's stupid or that he's hard to listen to.  These people just don't understand Ron Santo's beautiful relationship with the game.  There was nothing else (just kidding, he's a great family man too).   (Editor's note: I should be using past tense I guess, but I don't think I'm ready for that)  Donald Hall said in his book Fathers Playing Catch With Sons, "Baseball is fathers and sons. Football is brothers beating each other up in the backyard, violent and superficial. Baseball is the generations, looping backward forever with a million apparitions of sticks and balls, cricket and rounders, and the games the Iroquois played in Connecticut before the English came. Baseball is fathers and sons playing catch, lazy and murderous, wild and controlled, the profound archaic song of birth, growth, age, and death. This diamond encloses what we are."  Baseball isn't meant to be focused on 100% when you're watching or listening.  Every pitch doesn't need to be analyzed because there's not that much meaning behind a 1-1 outside fastball that the pitcher was trying to brush the corner with.  It doesn't need to be looked at too hard.  Other things can be talked about during a ballgame because there isn't a need for the entire three hours to be filled with play descriptions and analysis.  Ron Santo understood that.  He would get up and go to the bathroom between innings, he would get hot dogs and go silent for batters at a time while eating them, he was just a fan.  He was somebody that other fans could relate to, and that's why he's so loved.

When Sportsman's Park in St. Louis was torn down, he was quoted as saying "I'm going to miss it... It always felt like it was baseball here."  That's what Ron Santo's voice has been for the last twenty years.  It always meant baseball.  He lived through the Cubs, and now he's died with the Cubs.