Five gold gloves, nine All-star appearances and 342 home runs (more than all but two third basemen in the Hall of Fame) says it all about Ron Santo's credentials for the Hall of Fame. What's more amazing is that he did all that while battling Type 1 diabetes.
Imagine what those numbers might be if he didn't have diabetes, and didn't go through bouts when blood-sugar levels were not going up and down like a yo-yo. Think what those numbers would be if the management tools in the 1960s and '70s were what they are today. He played before blood-sugar monitors, insulin pumps or even much knowledge about the disease. He kept Snickers bars in his locker when he felt blood sugars running low.
During most of his career, he asked his teammates to keep his disease a secret. He didn't make it public until 1971. "I feared that if the Cubs found out and I slumped badly, they would attribute it to the diabetes and send me back to the minors-or worse, release me," Santo wrote in a 2003 article for Guideposts.
Judging by his Hall of Fame numbers, Santo didn't have many slumps and with the possible exception of Brooks Robinson, I doubt if anyone ever fielded the position better than Santo.
The only shame is that Santo's induction into the Hall of Fame came almost two years after his death. Santo, who was a Cubs broadcaster after hi playing career and one of the most colorful figures in baseball's history, would have given a heck of an induction speech. He very much wanted his family to be there and enjoy it. Well...I suppose it's better being late than never. Although he's no longer with us, Santo's accomplishments will live forever.
But as much as he did as a baseball player, Santo did even more to promote diabetes awareness and raise funds for juvenile diabetes research. He continued to broadcast Cubs'games, even after heart attacks, a quadruple bypass surgery, two leg amputations and diminished vision-just to show he was not going to let the disease beat him. According to the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation, Santo helped raise more then $60 million toward efforts to cure, better treat, and prevent Type 1 diabetes.
"It's funny. I always thought I'd make my biggest mark as a ballplayer but it was after I started speaking up about diabetes that I really made a difference," he wrote in the Guideposts article.
With his induction into the Hall of Fame, Santo still is making a difference more than a year and a half after his death. Complications from diabetes ultimately took his life. But he stands as proof that there are no limits to what a person with Type 1 diabetes can accomplish, even with that horrible disease.
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