Posted by chicagomedia.org on August 28, 2009 at 12:24:42:
Announcer Ron Santo suffering with Cubs - again
Posted: Thursday August 27, 2009 6:04 PM
CHICAGO (AP) -- Jeff Santo was listening to a recent Chicago Cubs game when reliever Kevin Gregg walked the Padres' David Eckstein -- with a three-run lead in the ninth inning.
Just as he groaned, "Come on,'' a voice on the radio moaned the exact same words. It was his father. And just as he sat in silence moments later when a Padre hit a homer to win the game, so too did Ron Santo.
"You didn't hear a word,'' the younger Santo said.
Jeff Santo knew what it all meant: The Cubs were killing his father. Again.
In the history of baseball, no fans have suffered longer and more famously than followers of the Cubs. And none of them has suffered like Santo.
Since the day he joined the team as a 20-year-old rookie in 1960, Santo has never seen the team play in the World Series. He made nine All-Star teams in his 14 years with the Cubs, but the team routinely finished at or near the bottom of the standings.
One of the few times they didn't was in 1969, when they finished second after leading the Mets by nine games on Aug. 16. Two photos of Santo from that season symbolize the pain and joy of his life and his team.
In one, Santo, bat on shoulder, stands in the on-deck circle at Shea Stadium, watching a black cat scurry past. The shot fits nicely with all the talk about curses and bad luck that shadows the team. In the other, Santo happily clicks his heels as he runs off the field - a cruel reminder both of the way the season ended and the diabetes that ultimately took both his legs.
Today, the 69-year-old Santo is in his 20th year in the team's radio booth, providing the soundtrack for the team that year after year has gotten its fans' hopes up only to dash them. And he has done it as one of them.
"I've always been a Cub fan,'' he said. "I look at my job as an analyst, but I'm a fan along with it.''
That's for sure.
Santo openly roots for the Cubs, routinely referring to them as "We.'' He shouts "YES, YES,'' or "ALL RIGHT'' when the Cubs come through with a big play - not to mention a "dump her,'' when a fan in an e-mail asks him what to do about a girlfriend who happens to be a Mets fan.
When things go wrong, as they invariably have since the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, he responds with an "It's bad'' or dejectedly sighs, "Oh, boy.'' When they go really and suddenly bad, his "OH, NOOOO'' sounds like he just ran over his dog. Sometimes, like Tuesday night when the a grand slam gave the lowly Nationals a 9-1 lead, he simply stops talking.
"The emotion for me is strictly the love I have for this team,'' he said. "I want them to win so bad.''
Bad enough to literally make him sick.
"It's thrown him into the hospital,'' said Jeff Santo, a filmmaker who made "This Old Cub,'' a documentary about his father.
And bad enough that people around Santo have gone to him and suggested he "detach himself a little bit,'' said Bob Brenly, a former broadcast partner who is now the analyst for the team's television broadcasts. "But it's not in him,'' he said.
Even fans have taken notice.
"When he's not on the broadcast I'm actually worried about his health,'' said Rick Kaempfer, a lifelong fan who has a Web site devoted to the Cubs.
Fans also have come to enjoy not knowing exactly what might happen with Santo. Perhaps that's a result of incidents like the time his hairpiece got too close to the overhead heater and started to smolder or when he starts telling stories, like the one about falling down and hitting his head in Japan after drinking too much sake. Then again, it might be the time at the beginning of his very first broadcast that the very first word Cubs fans heard from him was an expletive when he spilled coffee on his scorecard -- a story Brenly confirmed.
He does have plenty of detractors. Some fans complain that for a nine-time All-Star who won five Gold Gloves at third base, Santo spends very little time explaining what is going on in front of him.
"I would prefer the color analyst, (since) you can't see the game, to tell me what's going on,'' said Al Yellon, who also has a Cubs-themed Web site.
But Yellon understands all the cheering and groaning that comes out of Santo.
"He lives and dies for the team as the rest of us do,'' he said.
Kaempfer, though, enjoys Santo precisely because he is such an unabashed fan.
"He feels the pain so deeply,'' Kaempfer said.
Santo also has something that fans like Kaempfer value above everything else: Hope. No matter what happens, no matter how many years and how many ways the Cubs fail, Santo does not give up hope.
It was there Tuesday night when the Nationals were routing the Cubs, a game they ultimately won 15-6. In a broadcast filled with Santo's sighs of "Oh boy'' and "Oh gosh,'' a Cub walk with the team down 9-1, prompted this: "Maybe we can get to (Nationals pitcher Garrett) Mock.''
"I heard him talking about how the Rockies won 21 in a row a few years ago (they won 21 out of 22 in one stretch) and hanging his hat on that, saying it could be us,'' Kaempfer said.
It is Santo's devotion to the team and his optimism that he will see the Cubs win a World Series -- no, he hasn't given up on this season -- that helps explain the attachment that fans like Kaempfer have to Santo.
"It unifies Cubs fans,'' he said.
It also may be his salvation.
Santo has lost count of the number of times he's undergone surgery, on his eyes, his heart and more than a dozen operations to save his legs before they were ultimately amputated below the knees, the right one in 2001 and the left a year later.
The team, in fact, figured in his decision to tell doctors to amputate his left leg rather than undergo months of treatment to try to save it.
"I said 'I'm doing so well with my right leg, take the leg, it's inevitable. I'm going to lose it,''' he said. "I didn't miss spring training. ... When I got back to that booth, everything was wonderful, it was like therapy for me.''
That doesn't surprise his son.
"The job is his life, it just keeps his energy up to go out there and be part of something special,'' Jeff Santo said. "He loves his family and we love him but (the Cubs) is what keeps him going, that's why he's stayed around.''